Uglies- Final - External and Internal Conflicts

       In the book Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, Tally lives in a future "Utopia" where you are considered an Uglie until you turn 16, where then you undergo a several week surgery. After the surgery is finished, you are considered a Prettie, and you go and live in Pretty Town. All the Pretties ever do is party and have fun. It seems like a perfect world. Especially to Tally, who had been brought up to this "tradition"(For lack of better term). She doesn't see anything wrong with it. Someone like her, who would? The surgeons make you pretty and you look perfect like the other Pretties. She learned that long ago, the Rusties (humans from long ago who's society came crashing down) had problems because some were always going to be much more pretty than other people. Whenever Tally rarely sees an adult Pretty, she becomes scared and frightened. It shows how much this operation and tradition had influence the people of UglyVille and Pretty Town.
     The external conflict is the fact that Tally has to betray her friend Tally and turn her in into the "SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES" or never become pretty. You might be thinking, of course, just don't become pretty. How bad can it be? But Tally has been influenced by this way of teaching that she cannot grasp the idea of someone not being pretty when she is over 16. So when she decides to go to the Smoke, (a secret city in the Rustic Ruins that the society does not know its whereabouts) (also the place where SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES wants Tally to reveal and press the button on her locket to sent the officers to Smoke), she faces a whole new life. Tally meets a boy who was born in the Smoke, and knew nothing of the way the Society worked. She had to betray all the people who lived in the Smoke so she could become Pretty. Now this is where the internal conflict comes in.
      Since Tally is human(mentioned in last blog), she has feelings of guilt and sadness. When she learns that if Tally pressed the button, she will be ruining and taking away the lives of the many people who live in the Smoke, she becomes more hesitant to press it. Nobody wants to strip away people's lives and leave them defenseless against the Society. And more importantly, David. Tally for one, has fallen in love with him, and it hurts her to be betraying the one she loves. Also, David doesn't know anything of the Society that Tally is from and the Society that might take him away and lead him to a scary, new, unknown life. These are the internal conflicts.
       Towards the end of the book, Tally makes a sacrifice. David's mother has created a pill that just might remove the brain tumor that the surgeons put in Pretties to make them clueless and not rebel against Society. However, she has no Pretty to test it on. So Tally declares that she will go to Society, turn herself in, and let them make her pretty. I think this is the way Tally wants to say, "I'm sorry". To make up for her betrayal, it is the least she can do. In conclusion, this book was amazing, and I am hoping to read the second book.