Uglies: Themes | SparkNotes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Beauty as an Ideal

Beauty is a fixed ideal in the novel and plays a major role in shaping Tally’s society. Pointing to the errors of the past, her city mandates that everyone get cosmetic surgery so that no one is singled out or discriminated against for their looks. Beauty, to them, is an equalizing force. Ironically, however, people who do not have the surgery are ostracized for their ugly looks and suffer self-esteem issues. As Tally explains to her friend Shay, people have discovered what is biologically, and therefore, objectively beautiful—a standard set of features such as facial symmetry and large eyes that work on the mind subconsciously. The idea is that if everyone has these features, then no person is singled out and everyone has a chance at living a happy and successful life. But as Tally begins to learn through her relationship with David, beauty is subjective, dependent on both inner and outer factors. People’s faces morph and change before Tally’s eyes as she grows to know them through the beauty of their actions and their care for her. Tally learns there are many paths to beautiful. Beauty, therefore, becomes a less stable ideal, and something that comes in many forms and varieties.

Loyalty in Friendship

Tally struggles with the concept of loyalty throughout the novel. She faces the questions of who is she loyal to and why? Tally is first loyal to Peris, who makes her promise to stay out of trouble so she can make it to Pretty Town. But Peris abandons Tally by never coming to visit her. Shay disrupts Tally’s loyalty to Peris by making a promise to Tally that she’ll never abandon her after they get their surgeries. When Shay runs away, Tally faces another challenge to her loyalty: Will she infiltrate the Smoke and give up its location to keep her government safe? Tally ends up making a relatively selfish decision, based mostly on her fear of becoming an Ugly for the rest of her life.

As Dr. Cable says, Tally’s one superpower is self-preservation. Finally, at the end of the novel, Tally is faced with one last challenge to her loyalty that will ultimately change her. Now that she has betrayed her friend and the Smoke, she must decide if she will make amends for her betrayal. Tally decides to make the ultimate sacrifice by turning herself in to get cosmetic surgery. This will help test Maddy’s cure and hopefully save her friend Shay, who has been turned into a Pretty. Tally learns the value of integrity over self-preservation through her loyalty to her friend and the Smokies she betrayed.

Dependence on Technology

Tally’s society may criticize the Rusties for their dependence on oil, but they are equally dependent on technology to survive. Technology shapes almost every aspect of the structures that support Tally’s society. Their social structure is built on cosmetic surgery; their hoverboard transportation is dependent on metal grids that lie underground; their economy is based on their technology. The society is heavily dependent on highly-skilled workers like doctors to perform the hundreds of necessary surgeries needed every year to produce Pretties. These skilled workers are so necessary that they are spared the brain lesions to protect their intelligence and critical thinking skills. The Rusties, similarly, were overly dependent on oil. When someone engineered a bacterium to infect petroleum, their whole civilization literally went up in smoke. Even though Tally’s society thinks it is far more advanced than the Rusties it could easily collapse if something went wrong with their city grids. The people as well, since they’ve been made docile, wouldn’t be able to take care of themselves. As David tells Tally, every society has a dependency on something which weakens it.

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