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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Metal

Metal appears several times throughout the novel. It’s a highly valuable resource in Tally’s society because, without metal, their primary mode of transportation—the hoverboard—won’t work. When Tally and Shay venture outside the city, they have to trace rivers and rail tracks for other sources of metal to keep their hoverboards aloft. When Tally arrives in the Smoke, her first job is to scavenge scrap metal. Tally can’t seem to escape metal. Ironically, metal was important to the Rusties, too. Their ruins are full of it. From the railroad tracks, buildings, and rollercoasters that dot the ruins, the Rusties relied heavily on the material as well. Metal is the thing that connects the past to the present, and the way each society tracks itself. Metal, as is shown in the novel, is the symbol of human dependence on earth, no matter how technologically advanced it gets. 

Rabbits

When Special Circumstances comes to raid the Smoke, they round up the Smokies in a makeshift rabbit pen. Tally notices how the rabbits in the pen were too overwhelmed with their new and unexpected freedom to run once Special Circumstances opened the pen up. When she and David return to the Smoke to survey the damage, Tally watches in horror as a stray rabbit is taken by a wolf. She reflects on how nature reverts so quickly back to itself, raw and wild, only a few hours after civilization falls. Later, Tally’s sense of confidence and self-reliance develops when David teaches her to capture and cook a rabbit in the wild to survive. Rabbits are symbolically docile animals, similar to the way the Pretties become after surgery. They appear as a reminder that docility makes one easy prey for predators in the wild. As the novel suggests, becoming a Pretty might not be such an evolutionary advantage after all.

Bungee Jumping

Bungee jumping appears repeatedly in the novel as a device to show Tally’s emotional growth. At first, bungee jumping is a cheap thrill the Pretties use to pass the time in Pretty Town that Tally finds shocking and foolish. Tally finds herself having to jump from the tower herself moments later when she’s pursued by Pretties who realize she doesn’t belong in Pretty Town. Peris tells her to jump. She’s terrified but has no choice. Tally’s jump bonds her to Shay, however, who finds Tally’s daredevil ways admirable. They further bond over jumping when they stage a trick bungee jump to scare the new Littlies during their summer orientation. The bungee jump becomes a more serious matter, however, when Tally realizes it’s her and David’s only way to get into Special Circumstances to save the others. Each jump feels like a fall into the unknown to Tally, but she gets more accustomed to the fear with each jump. The bungee jumps symbolize her relationship to risk, and her openness to chance as she opens her mind with her exposure to the world outside the confines of her city.

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