Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Uglies, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Conformity vs. Individuality
Beauty, Science, and Influence
The Natural World, History, and Growing Up
Friendship and Loyalty
Summary
Analysis
David and Tally leave the cave the next morning. Tally is thirsty and cold after spending the night without shoes or a coat. David suggests they kill a rabbit back at the Smoke, and then they ride double on David’s hoverboard. They smell the Smoke before they get there and discover that everything is burned. They stop high on the mountain and Tally convinces David that they need to watch and wait in case there are Specials there. She assures him that they’ll look for Maddy and Az after they make sure the Smoke is clear. After an hour, they head down. Nobody is there, but they discover that about 20 Smokies ditched their shoes so that Tally could use one of the pairs. She chooses some and tries to hide her guilt over the fact that the people she betrayed are helping her.
The Smokies’ offering of shoes illustrates how close-knit and loyal they are to the people they love. This is so difficult for Tally because she doesn’t feel she deserves kindness like this after betraying them. Having to grapple with these thoughts impresses upon Tally that being an adult out in the wild, without the pretty operation, is much more difficult than she ever thought it would be. She has to make more decisions and cope with more challenges than she ever thought possible—and indeed, far more than what’s possible as a pretty in the city.
Themes
Tally and David continue their tour of the Smoke and discover the library burning with the books still in it. David bitterly says that the Specials don’t want anyone to know what things were like before the operation, so they can make the uglies hate themselves. Tally suggests that the Boss might have made it out with his magazines. She finds the duffel bag, still full of magazines, and then finds the Boss: he's dead, with his head turned at a horrific angle. Tally stumbles back out of the forest and tells David what she found; David says they have to go to his parents’ house.
David understands that Special Circumstances doesn’t want anyone to know how things were before their current society. It’s in their best interest to erase anything that might complicate or add to their insistence that the Rusties were just crazy and horrible—and the Boss’s magazines, for instance, paint a more nuanced picture than Special Circumstances wants to admit.
Themes
