Uglies

Smoke is both a substance and a place in Uglies. It serves as a reminder of the past and a promise for the future.

Smoke as a substance makes Tally uncomfortable. Its smell, paired with images of fire, reminds her of school lessons about the long-dead Rusties and the way they abused nature. She is further disturbed by smoke when she almost dies in a controlled blaze. This burning of an invasive species is the first time she sees the destructive nature of fire bent to a productive cause, though the lesson is tinged in horror due to her near-death experience. Smoke becomes complicated for Tally as she tries to reconcile her history lessons with what she learns in the wilderness, and the discrepancy emphasizes her ignorance about the world.

Smoke as a place represents community, individuality, and growth. The Smokies set out from their cities, searching for a life free of the city’s oppressive rules and regulations. They walk a precarious line, giving and taking from nature in an effort to be sustainable. In the Smoke Tally grows confident, contributes productively to a community, and explores what it means to be an individual. She begins to appreciate people for who they are and stops desiring to meet external standards of being “pretty.” Each of these personal developments contributes to her maturity. The Smoke’s almost immediate resurgence after its destruction by Special Circumstances shows its potential. It also indicates that the Smoke community is bound by their shared values and ideas, which—as the city’s stringent control of information indicates—hold considerable power and are much harder to kill than people.

In the novel, “pretty” and “ugly” have connotations that extend beyond their conventional definitions. Pretty and ugly are different parts of the caste system at work in Tally’s society. Children enter society as littlies; they become uglies once they reach adolescence and pretties when they turn 16, and then they advance through different stages of pretty until they are old enough to classify as crumbly. There are responsibilities and expectations associated with each stage of life, as well as unwritten restrictions about who can interact with whom. Peris is disturbed when Tally visits him after his pretty surgery because pretties do not socialize with uglies. While Tally’s parents visit her after her pretty surgery is delayed, they deny her request to move back in with them, showing how far these unwritten restrictions extend.

The meanings of the terms “pretty” and “ugly” add to the city’s malicious, insidious nature. The positive connotations of “pretty” make the pretty surgery and lifestyle seem enticing, just as the negative connotations of “ugly” degrade adolescents and make them feel unworthy. This reinforces the myth that the pretty surgery is desirable and will erase a person’s problems. Later in the novel, when Tally sees remnants from the past and experiences life at the Smoke, she gains insight that challenges this ideology. Her decision to become pretty occurs only after she accepts herself as ugly, and the fact that she has to step right back into the city just after breaking free of its ideology makes the sacrifice more tragic.

When Tally arrives at the Smoke, she trades some of her dehydrated food for new supplies, which include a handmade sweater that is “brown with bands of pale red and green highlights” (212). Tally immediately recognizes the sweater as a beautiful thing, wearing it during the day and using it as a pillow at night. The sweater is both as a physical reminder of the Smoke and a representation of what people are capable of. Even without the conveniences of the city, people can create functional and beautiful items, demonstrating that they can be independent and self-sufficient despite what the city wants them to think. When Tally gives herself up to the city, she wears the wool sweater, carrying a piece of the Smoke with her as she must turn her back on her chosen life. The last thing she wears is a symbol of Smoke and human potential.