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The Society In Ally Condie's Matched

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Life would be perfect if everyone could be married to their true love, jobs fit perfectly to personalities, and diseases were practically nonexistent. The Society in Ally Condie’s novel Matched offers these things and more. But what exactly is the real price for having a seemingly perfect life? In order to have a perfect society with perfect lives, freedoms have to be given up and strict laws must be observed. This may be evident in the book especially, but can also be seen around the world in the different cultures that are prevalent. Ally Condie is a New York Times bestseller novelist that lives on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah with her family of four children and her husband. She mostly writes books for young adults and children. …show more content…

Condie does an excellent job in incorporating this and especially in that in the beginning of the book, everyone had a tree in their front yard. One day, the Officials decided to pull all of the trees out because they promoted the idea of being different. Later, each person’s “artifact’s” were taken and never restored. Life was still fairly peaceful with different recreational activities in the summer for the children and evening activities for all that included games, different movies, and listening to music. However, C0ondie stresses through different characters throughout the book that the activities never really change, they are all mostly to promote being the same once everyone is older. The movies are in fact videos of the Society terrorizing the Outer Provinces and convincing the people in the close districts that what they are seeing is just a show, there really aren’t that many people being hurt. We see this when Cassia, Ky, Xander, and a few other friends decided to go to the movies for a recreational activity one night. Cassia notices KY “is crying. Without a sound” (90). And later “when the movie ends, reprising the sweeping travelogue from the beginning, Ky takes a deep breath. I can tell that it aches… He is calm and composed and back to the Ky I know. Or the one I thought I knew” (91). The Society even went as far as sending off all of the people with Anomaly or Aberration status to fight off the Enemy and would normally die within a short time while fighting the enemy. Cassia has the opportunity to fight against the government with words when her grandfather reveals to her two poems that were hidden in her artifact and she begins a struggle against the government with words. Even though she couldn’t keep the words she had written down, in the end of the book she resolves that she will write her own

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