Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Choirs, Flowers, and Forests

The other night I went to my sister's choir concert.  She is in the elite choir in her school and this was their final concert.  There were around twenty-eight kids ranging in ages from 16 to 18.  Sitting there for an hour and a half, staring at their faces, I couldn't help but think about the book Uglies.

Don't get me wrong--I didn't think these kids were ugly.  In fact, most of them were remarkably beautiful, (including my sister, of course.)  :)  But I pondered on their faces, the different shapes, sizes, and proportions of their features.  I realized that in Tally's world, only one of these teenagers would be considered "pretty," and even the one would only qualify for the word by her face, not her body.  (Too skinny for pretty standards.)

Uglies definitely brings out some probing questions about why we consider certain things beautiful and other things not.  Would you really want to live in a world were everyone looked essentially the same?  Just something to mentally digest...

One more little thought that I'll have to return to later: are the white flowers a symbol for the "pretties" and the forest a symbol for the "uglies."  I think so, but I'll have to finish the book to find out for sure.  More to come on that at a later time!  :)

No comments:

Post a Comment