Literary Devices in Uglies
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
There are three important things about the setting: It takes place in the future, about 300 years after some sort of disaster destroys the old civilization (24.60).It takes place partly in an unnam...
Genre
Young Adult LiteratureDon't let anyone tell you YA lit is just for kids. All that "YA" means is that (1) usually the main characters are teens and (2) the book deals with issues that teens are deal...
Tone
SympatheticIt would be easy to hate these characters, wouldn't it? You could look at Tally at the beginning, talking about how pretty people are, and say,"she's so shallow." You could look at Shay,...
What's Up With the Title?
Uglies is named after the stage that most of its main characters are in. Tally, Shay, and even David are all "uglies." (The second book is named Pretties, so maybe we'll see more pretty characters...
What's Up With the Epigraph?
Each of the three parts has its own epigraph:Is it not good to make society full of beautiful people? —Yang Yuan, quoted in The New York TimesThere is no excellent beauty that hath not some stran...
What's Up With the Ending?
To picture the end of Uglies, just imagine a giant jar marked "IRONY" falling off a shelf marked "CLIFFHANGER."Pretty Shay and ugly Tally go to turn themselves in to the government of the city that...
Tough-o-Meter
Once you get used to the fact that kids are called "littlies," it's pretty smooth reading. Actually, "littlies" is Australian slang for "little kids"—so readers from Australia have a head start h...
Trivia
The teen plastic surgery trend—what trend? Westerfeld's main characters may be teens getting some pretty radical plastic surgery. But according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surge...
Allusions
Garbo Mansion (1.43) is probably named after Greta Garbo, the great actress who was considered quite a looker in her day When Shay makes a joke about Tally's pig mask—"So let me guess, someone bl...