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Chapters 46–50

Summary: Chapter 46: Getaway

Maddy cuts the tracking devices out of their orange uniforms and instructs everyone to scatter the devices to throw the Specials off their trail. Tally and Shay ride one hoverboard, giving them a chance to talk. Shay tells Tally that she doesn’t resent Tally anymore for betraying the Smoke and stealing David from her. She says that she has grown up. Tally asks Shay a line of questions to help her see her reasoning doesn’t add up. Tally hopes that maybe she can talk Shay out of her brain damage, but it doesn’t work. When Tally realizes that Shay’s damage is irreversible, tears begin to fill her eyes. Shay tries to console her, but Tally says there’s nothing she can do to make her feel better.

Summary: Chapter 47: Night Alone

The runaway Smokies meet at a cave near the Ruins. Croy tells Tally that Maddy and David stayed behind to camp alone for a night. Tally tries to leave, but Croy stops her, saying Maddy instructed her to stay put. The next morning, Tally wakes up cuddled up to Shay’s body, which is fuller since the operation. Shay whines that she is done camping and would like to go home. Tally muses on the fact that it never crosses Shay’s mind she could return by herself. Later, they all meet up with David and Maddy. David and Tally embrace. Maddy reveals that she has stolen some of Dr. Cable’s data. She believes she can find a cure for the damage done by the Pretty surgery. Tally realizes that Shay may go back to hating her again.

Summary: Chapter 48: Hippocratic Oath

While Maddy looks for a cure to reverse the brain damage from the operations, the Smokies recruit more Uglies to the Rusty Ruins. Maddy, who once carefully guarded the secret, now gives the Smokies permission to tell the Uglies the truth. The Specials try to capture the Smokies, but they’re scattered throughout the Rusty Ruins and well-hidden. After twenty days, Maddy emerges with a cure. She invites Shay to take the pill, but Shay refuses. Maddy explains she took an oath as a doctor and can’t give the pill to anyone without their consent. Maddy then reveals that is how Az died—Dr. Cable tried an experimental drug on him to erase his memory and he died. Tally, overcome with emotion and guilt, offers herself as a willing subject. 

Summary: Chapter 49: Confessions

Tally offers to go back to the city, turn herself in, and get the operation so she can become a subject for Maddy’s cure. David resists, refusing to let Tally destroy herself. Tally, realizing Maddy knows the truth, confesses to David that she was a spy for Dr. Cable. She says that she came to the Smoke as a spy, but ended up changing her mind and inadvertently setting off the locket when she threw it in the fire. David runs out, upset. Tally tries to follow him but Maddy stops her. There’s a cold look in her eyes; Tally realizes she blames her for Az’s death. Maddy tells her to go now before she or David changes her mind. Tally agrees to go but vows that David will pick her up after the operation if he forgives her. 

Summary: Chapter 50: Down the River

Tally writes a letter to herself so she knows she gave consent to take the pills before the operation. Since she was never taught handwriting, she has Shay write the note. Shay is relieved that Tally is having the operation and heading back to town. Shay says she feels responsible for Tally still being ugly, and that is why she’s stayed back with her at the ruins. Shay is excited for them to become Pretties and rule the social scene back home. Tally wonders if thinking about her feelings for David will prevent the operation from taking hold of her brain. As they reach the city, a warden stops them, confused that an Ugly and a Pretty are traveling together. Tally identifies herself and requests to be made pretty. 

Analysis: Chapters 46–50

During the final chapters, Tally’s journey reaches its resolution, both narratively and with her character. She’s traveled back to the city to free her friends because she feels guilty for betraying the Smoke. She hopes to make things right and free herself from her guilt. Her act is honorable and sincere. And even though David doesn’t realize the true reason she’s motivated to return to save his parents and the others, his admiration of her is still justified. She plans to break into Special Circumstances and free everyone at once, and hopefully build Smoke anew.

Tally, relying on her quick wits, comes up with an ingenious plan to bungee jump onto the roof of the building from their hoverboards. Tally is not new to bungee jumping, but the sport has changed for her at this point. Formerly a clever trick played by Uglies to pass time, and by Pretties to get a manufactured sense of exhilaration, bungee jumping is now serving a very serious purpose—to save people from capture. She’s able to capitalize on her skills, once used for selfish purposes, to leverage them for higher ends. 

The use of the bungee jumps is highly symbolic. Through her experiences in the wild and the Smoke, Tally has made many free falls by this point. She’s free-fallen into the gap in the roller coaster, into the chasm during her worst mistake, and, metaphorically, into an uncertain future when she throws her locket into the fire. Tally has come a long way from her first bungee jump from the tower in Pretty Town at the beginning of the novel when Peris forces her to jump. Tally now has the actual courage to back up her daredevil moves. As she and David make the jump together onto the roof, she experiences a mixture of fear, but this time she’s sharing it with another person. David looks back at her, feet away, his “face alight” with exhilaration. The free-fall now has more meaning for her since she’s doing it with another person. It’s also something she’s proud to share with David.

When Tally finds Shay inside the Special Circumstances building, changed into a Pretty, she is newly crushed. Her success quickly turns into a much more profound failure. Tally isn’t able to save Shay from the one thing Shay worked so hard to avoid—becoming a Pretty. Worse, Shay is happy to see Tally and offers her easy forgiveness. Their meeting is bittersweet. Tally knows her forgiveness is not based on real feelings, but brain damage. In an ironic turn of phrase, Shay also offers to keep Tally’s ugly secret. Shay now knows about Tally’s deception because she’s been with Dr. Cable for two weeks, who has revealed everything. She knows Tally was sent by Dr. Cable to the Smoke as a spy. The use of the term “ugly” here is used to refer to something truly ugly, Tally’s betrayal, rather than a notion society has dictated. The theme of beauty being something perceived and not a fixed ideal comes true here since Tally, and her secret, should appear ugly in this case. 

The irony continues when Tally uses Shay’s hand to write her note of consent to take Maddy’s pills. Tally doesn’t know how to write by hand. Once again, two friends are bonding over their hands. This time, the hands are not being mutually scarred, but mutually joining to create a pact for the future. Tally is writing the note to make sure she can’t go back on her vow to take the pills after her surgery; Shay is unknowingly helping to save herself from brain damage by helping Tally test the experimental pill that may reverse her brain damage. They’re both joining hands to make a sacrifice, for the future. Tally’s emotional journey is complete: She feels a deep sense of responsibility for her betrayal of a way of life and her friend’s surgery. She has learned the hard lesson of repentance, and the ability to take truly courageous acts of sacrifice and action towards a purpose greater than herself.

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