The Specials: Good or Evil?

By Emma-la

Okay, in Uglies, they basically classify the Specials as “evil” and “diabolical”. Well, they can’t have been that bad, could they? I mean, there are 2 sides to every story! And I am going to tell that second side, for the good of the Specials. 
Okay, so, after the “big event” and all, (the big event being mankind nearly killing itself) you would be pretty paranoid too, wouldn’t you? So, we blow up and nearly kill us all. Not exactly very good. So, would you just go back to your normal life, killing the ozone layer and readying to blow up again? I wouldn’t. The Specials knew that we couldn’t just live the way we used to. The wars and the oil and the new chemicals…they all helped in the destroying of our lives. So, what could they do? They were running the world basically, and so they needed to find an answer to this problem.
Well, to solve a problem, you need to think of why it is a problem in the first place. Start with war, for instance. Want of land. People not liking others for how they look. Want to destroy things. Hate. Nuclear bombs and all that. Answer to stop all this: Make everyone happy with what they’ve got. Make everyone look the same so there isn’t anything to fight about in that area. Turn hate into happy (AKA, modify their brains). Get rid of all the dangerous chemicals and bombs.
So, that’s what the Specials did. They found the technology to make everyone beautiful and looking pretty much the same. Then, they knew that wouldn’t be enough, even if the citizens didn’t know that. Now, nobody would willingly make their brains mush, would they? So, they made the Operation, so that they could cover up what they were really doing, for the sake of mankind, by telling people there was no more war because there was nothing left to fight about-beauty, everyone had equal amounts of what they wanted. They couldn’t tell them, so they just did it. It was either be truthful, or risk humankind killing itself all over again. They chose the safer option.
Then, they came up with a new version of police. Special Circumstances. Since they couldn’t do the Operation until they were 16, there were still trouble making little “uglies” out there, and so they needed to stop them from destroying the world. So, they taught them lies, told them they were ugly and only the operation could fix that, and if anyone doubted it, then Special Circumstances would scare them enough that they would just back off. It was that easy.

So, the Specials had their reasons. They may not have made the right decisions, but they did what they thought was right. You can’t blame them for being paranoid after what happened. I’m not saying that I am on their side, just that we should cut them some slack.