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
Tally falls off her hoverboard and remembers to relax like Shay told her to. The crash bracelets around Tally’s wrists spin her in circles before setting her down. Tally brushes off Shay’s compliment that Tally is getting better and is confused when Shay uses a word, “roller coaster,” that Tally doesn’t know. With a sigh, Tally steps back onto her board and checks her belly sensor, which tells the board where her center of gravity is. As Tally continues to ride, her board will learn her movements. Tally snaps her fingers and leans forward to start the board while Shay cruises above and behind Tally. Shay yells pointers as Tally makes a loop through the park and then heads for the slalom flags. Tally almost falls, but she rights herself.
Shay teaching Tally to hoverboard reinforces the idea that friendship is best when friends can teach each other different things. Hoverboards are a way for young people in Tally’s world to get around independently before they have access to hovercars—in this way, they function much like bikes or skateboards do in the reader’s world. As Tally learns to ride, she’s developing independence as well as deepening her connection to Shay.
Themes
As Tally turns with delight to tell Shay she did it, she falls. Tally and Shay laugh, and Shay calls Tally “Squint” and tells her to not celebrate like that. Tally has learned in the last week that Shay only uses ugly nicknames as put-downs, so they mostly call each other by their real names. It’s nice—other than Shay, only a few teachers and Tally’s parents, Sol and Ellie, call her Tally. The girls sink into the grass and Tally starts to say that she hasn’t felt this good since Peris left, but she doesn’t say his name. Shay says she feels great too, and they realize they have the same birthday. Tally excitedly says they’ll turn pretty together and don’t have to worry about one of them abandoning the other, but Shay stops smiling.
The way that Shay uses ugly nicknames suggests that they mean something different to her than they do to Tally. Tally implies that most of the time, they all but replace a person’s real name (and, in that sense, come to define their identity), while for Shay, they’re a way to reprimand someone and make them feel bad. Since the nicknames draw from the ways in which the uglies are supposedly ugly, Shay’s usage suggests that she might not want to focus all the time on her “negative” qualities. She demonstrates, through her language choices, a kinder way of being.
Themes
Shay says she wouldn’t abandon Tally anyway, but Tally points out that new pretties never visit or write. Shay says she’d visit, and Tally makes the promise too. Shay shrugs and points out that Tally isn’t the first person to make that promise. Tally watches the sky and tries to remember how Peris looked before his operation. Shay wonders why pretties never come back to visit, and Tally replies that it’s because the uglies are so ugly.
Tally’s assertion that new pretties don’t write begs the question of why this is. Though Tally suggests that it’s because uglies are too ugly and New Pretty Town has too much to offer, it’s worth considering that it may be because uglies exist in a sort of purgatory between childhood innocence and the seeming perfection of life as a pretty. The pretties’ reluctance to associate with uglies suggesting that part of being pretty is being selfish and exclusionary.
Themes
