Uglies Betrayal Quotes

The first examples of betrayal in this book are abandonment—which is a form of betrayal most of us are familiar with. Tally feels betrayed by Peris when he turned pretty and no longer seemed to care about their friendship. And here are Tally and Shay talking about how they feel abandoned by the other. Yay for equal feelings of abandonment?

This quote reminds us that we need two things for a betrayal: (1) you need to have loyalty to someone else (which, in this case, is the promise that Tally made Shay)—and then (2) you need to go against that loyalty (as Tally will break that promise to Shay).

Ah, things would be so easy for Tally if she didn't have any friends or only had one friend. (For one thing, she'd only have to remember one birthday. But her Facebook wall would look a little sad.) Tally's problem is that she has many friends and has made many conflicting promises.

Tally finds herself lying almost compulsively. Why does she lie to Shay when she doesn't have to? We're really not sure—maybe she's lying because she wants the lies to be true? Thankfully, one person Tally doesn't lie to is herself.

Here's the real kicker of Tally's status: she was sent as an infiltrator, so she could totally becomes double agent here and spill all she knows about Dr. Cable to David. Around this time in the book, she knows that's the right thing to do—but that would mean harming her friendship with David. So which will she betray: her desire to be close to David or the Smoke? (Answer: the Smoke.)

What's the worst thing that Tally does in the book? Shay seems to think that kissing David is almost as bad as calling Special Circumstances to destroy the town. Imagine yelling at a friend, "You killed my parents—and ruined my favorite shirt!" Those two things don't have quite the same importance. But that's adolescence for you.

Finally, a fun bit of betrayal: here, Tally is pretending to work for Dr. Cable and pretending to help this Special. They're not friends, but they do have some relationship of trust, and Tally is betraying that trust. But, you know, for the good side this time.

This is Tally's defense, and honestly, it's not a great one. It may help to tell your friend, "I didn't mean to do that terrible thing that I did," but that doesn't fix things. By this time, Shay has already had the brain lesions and she's totally cool with Tally betraying her. But Tally will soon come to realize that she has to do more than apologize—she has to fix her betrayal.

When Tally comes out and confesses to David, she doesn't hem-and-haw. Which is why we like Tally: she may betray her friends, but when she (finally, finally) realizes she needs to confess to fix things, she comes right out and admits she was wrong. (Which is also why we know she'll never be a politician.)

All this time we've been beating up on Tally for betraying Shay, but Shay nicely reminds us of our first quote and how the issue of betrayal goes both ways: Tally betrayed Shay by helping Special Circumstances, but Tally only got caught up with Special Circumstances because Shay ran away. Neither meant to screw up the other's life, but they did. So everyone's wrong in this book, and maybe the sequel will be happier. (It would have to be, wouldn't it?)