Uglies Coming of Age Quotes

Coming of age can be a frightening thing, as Tally notes. And we can see why someone like Shay might be afraid of that: because growing up possibly means changing your identity. (Also, no longer being able to fit in your clothes.)

Adults always tell people to act their age and be more mature, usually in a way that means "be quiet." Even in the city we can see how this middle pretty who picks up Tally on the day of her surgery congratulates her for being so "mature" because she doesn't have a bag full of sentimental items, like stuffed animals. (Million-dollar idea: hovering stuffed animals.) And yet, as we'll come to see, the pretties aren't all that mature themselves.

Perhaps one part of coming of age is learning that your parents and other adults aren't totally right about everything. (But don't tell them that we said that.) So part of Tally's coming of age is when she listens to her parents and doesn't agree with them. They may be physically mature, but they don't know anything about the real world.

Shay here argues that the people in the cities are all kids, no matter how old they are, which would sort of explain Tally's parents and their lack of good advice (above). As far as Shay is concerned, real growing up requires facing some real challenges, like the kind people face in the Smoke.

Maddy, Az, and Tally are talking about brain lesions and drinking tea (the official drink of uncomfortable conversations about brain lesions). As Maddy explains, when they became doctors and lost the lesions, they still felt like themselves—but more mature versions of themselves. This is one reason why they didn't feel any great shift of identity. They simply felt like they were becoming more responsible and mature.

Okay, we included this note just because it makes us laugh when Tally has this thought: it's hard to tell between normal parental cluelessness and parental brain damage. But if we could be serious for a moment, it's interesting that, as soon as you come of age (like the parents), it gets harder to remember the problems that you passed through as an ugly. That makes coming of age sound like our historical problem in this book: it's hard to take seriously people in the past, just like it's hard to take kids seriously when you're grown up. Someone should write this paper quickly before we decide to.

Coming of age in Uglies is about finding a place to live and do good work. Unfortunately for Tally, she comes to feel at home in the Smoke just before the Smoke goes up in, well, smoke.

We usually think of growing up as something that happens naturally. You don't need help to grow older. In fact, lots of doctors in Hollywood will help you grow younger. But in Tally's world, people can force each other into "growing up." But maybe there are less extreme versions of helping people to grow up, like when Tally and Shay argue or when David tells Tally about the world—aren't they helping each other to grow up?

It certainly strikes us as weird that Shay has a complete change of view after an operation. But let's try to see things from her side: at one point, she was full of out of control emotions and "raging with hormones" (48.18). Now she can relax and feel better. From her POV, growing up is a good thing no matter how it happened.

What do you think Shay should do at the end of the book? Should she take the pill, knowing that she'll turn back into a whiny, unhappy person? (After all, that's kind of her identity before the surgery.) Or should she stay happy—and not herself?