Part 3

    

PICTURES

     This picture, I think represents the words from the text, because,this reminds me of the smoke. A large part of the book would not have happened if the smoke had not existed. This image also could represent the rangers burning parts of the forest to prevent the wild flowers from spreading and killing all other plants. The hill in this picture also seems to have far fewer trees than the surrounding area, so it could also represent the baldtop, where Tally Youngblood met up with the smokies.

    Although this picture may not directly describe any of the characters, it does relate to many of the main characters. Tally, for instance is related to this picture because of the smoke, Tally's life was forever changed when Shay ran away. Another person who was very much effected by the smoke was of course, Tally's friend Shay, Shay didn't want to have the operation because of what she had heard about the smoke, unlike Tally, she did not automatically absorb everything that she was told, and did not think that the operation would make her look any better.

     The person who this person relates the mos to is pretty well self explanatory, as only one of the characters in the book really wanted to become pretty. Tally was far more gullible when it came to the government trying to impress their views and beliefs on the people than Shay. Tally had always wanted to become pretty, years of being told that her image was a broken, ugly form that needed to be fixed eventually allowed her mind to begin to believe it, this was only reinforced when her best friend became pretty and told her that he wanted to see her become pretty.


     This relates to the operation because obviously, the operation requires tools such as these to cut away things and alter the body of the patient. Although the operation would require basic tools like this, I always imagined the operation involving strange, unconventional looking tools with no apparent purpose. This next picture will be one of these strange tools as I imagine it.

    

     This picture reminds me of new pretty town, based on what was described in the book as a city filled with happy people, who have fun all day long. The image is also of the city during sunset, or sunrise, which also show similarities to the description in the book, which said that people in new pretty town don't stop partying, and that the lights in the city are also always on. The strange shapes of the buildings in this image are very similar to how I pictured the city as looking, filled with illogical, almost impossible structures that people use to live in or,of course have parties and other entertainment events.


     The towers in the very back of the image remind me of how I imagined the party towers: thinner at the bottom than at the top, and being the tallest buildings in the city. the bean shaped building to the left of the O shaped building reminds me of the mansion that Tally met up with her friend in the beginning of the book, however when I read the book I imagined it as being closer to the party towers than it is in this image.
    

News

Today in the smoke, we will be talking to you about one of the many social injustices committed by the government in the society we once lived in. As you all now know, the government has withheld information from all of us, in particular about the operation. The teachers in uglyville always told us that we were ugly, and that unless we had an operation to "fix" us, we would remain ugly for the rest of our lives. Not only did they lie to us about how we looked, they lied to us about the operation itself; they never told us that the operation would alter our minds, turning us into a docile flock of animals, content to do nothing but our master's bidding.

     This deception is unfair, and insults our intelligence, which is of course immediately removed when we have the operation. On top of the fact that we aren't told about the operation, if we don't want to have the operation, we have no choice; when most of us ran away from uglyville before our 16th birthday, the government sent their special forces to hunt us down and capture us so that we would become pretty. Never once did the government think to consider our opinion on the matter, and so we live in hiding, unreachable to everyone from that retched society, and unfortunately this means that we are unreachable to many people who might not want to have the operation.

     I chose to write this newspaper article about the deceit of the government in the book, because it is probably one of the most important issues in the book. The lies that are uncovered later in the book are a very big part of the story, and doubtless will influence the later books. I chose to write this from the point of view of the smoke because they have a less biased view of the government, and have a far more informed view of what the government is doing, they know that the government is lying to them about the operation, and that they call them ugly for their entire lives to ensure that they have the operation.

     What only reinforces the fact that the government in the book is lying to the uglies is that they keep the smoke and things that happen outside of the city as secret as possible. If the government weren't lying about the operation and what it did to people's brains, they would let people make their own decisions, and let them decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to have the operation. The government thought that this was a better way to run the world, because there wouldn't be wars, jealousy, or other things because everyone would be more docile; this also means that the population is easier for the government to lead. The government in the book therefore wants to eliminate the smoke, because they are a variable that could bring down the carefully maintained environment that is the society.

SANTIAGO, Chile –  Walter Ulises Pizarro Molina is registered to vote in Chile's presidential elections next year, although he disappeared after being arrested 35 years ago during the country's dictatorship.

Pizarro Molina and more than 1,000 other Chilean dissidents who disappeared during the 1973-90 regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet are now registered to vote — an anomaly of Chile's new automatic registration system that took effect this year, eliminating the need for people over 18 to register in person.

The change has been hailed as a victory for democracy in Chile, increasing the pool of potential voters from 8 million to 13 million.

But with the system automatically sweeping up every adult citizen listed in the civil registry, mistakes were bound to happen. And now, electoral officials say the only way they can legally remove someone from the database is with an official death certificate.

Although the disappeared are considered by law to be alive unless proven otherwise in court, some of their relatives say including them among the nation's voters amounts to a cruel joke.

"My dad has the right to vote? What are they talking about? I don't even know where he is," Lorena Pizarro said about Walter Ulises, a mining technician and Communist Party member who disappeared in Santiago in December 1976.

"The forced disappearances didn't respect victims or their families, so the state should put in place measures so we're not forced to face this situation," said Pizarro, who leads an organisation of relatives of the disappeared.

The Chilean government officially estimates that 3,095 people were killed by the Pinochet government. About 1,200 of these are considered disappeared. Carlos Lorca Tobar, a psychiatrist and dissident detained in 1975, is one of them.

The database shows that Lorca Tobar, a close friend of former President Michelle Bachelet, who was also detained during the dictatorship, is registered to cast his vote in this year's municipal elections in the affluent Santiago neighbourhood of Providencia.

"We have to include them because we are obliged by law to do so," Elizabeth Cabrera, deputy director of the voting registry told The Associated Press. "It's a deplorable situation what the families are going through, but the registry simply doesn't have the power to decide who it includes or leaves out."

Relatives of the disappeared say it's just one more example of government failures to meet their demands for truth and justice.

About 700 military officials face court trials for the forced disappearance of dissidents and about 70 have been jailed under crimes against humanity. Only a very few have provided information leading to the whereabouts of people kidnapped and killed by the regime.

Newspaper article from www.foxnews.com

     I chose to put this article on the blog because it describes another social injustice that is very important in the book. The government in Uglies does not allow any people to make anything but the most limited of decisions, and when they decide to try to run their own lives, you get a reaction similar to the smoke. The government has carefully tailored this society so that nobody gets hurt, and nobody is envious of anyone else. When someone decides that they don't like the way the society is run, and runs away to the smoke, were their decisions aren't constantly made for them, the government searches for them, because they are not within the boundaries set out for them by the government.


     The government will do anything to find the smoke, and have an entire special force division for just such a task. The government does not want the smoke to exist because the people who live in it are not under their rule, and being a dictatorship, that is a problem. Without everyone under their control, the government begins to lose it's grip on everyone, this is why the operation also introduces lesions into the brain, this makes people far less ambitious; there is a reason why uglies break the rules and pretties don't: The pretties weren't meant to. The uglies are told that they are ugly ever since they turn twelve, over time of constantly being called ugly, their brains begin to except this foreign idea and turn it into their own; years of being called ugly every day makes them believe it, and only a few people think otherwise, and in order for the government to continue to rule, they have to subdue these people.