I think that the Rusties, in Uglies, are representing the day and age that we live in today.
“Don't worry. Who ever built this city loved to waste metal. They aren't called the Rusty Ruins because some guy called Rusty discovered them.” Tally had to agree. Every building sported jagged spurs of metal sticking from its broken walls, like bones jutting from a long-dead animal. She remembered that the Rusties didn't use hoverstruts; every building was squat, crude and massive, and needed a steel skeleton to keep it form falling down. (Page 62)
The description of the buildings in the Rusty Ruins, seem to be describing the buildings that we have now in the 20th century. Today we have massive buildings and all of our buildings have to have some kind of metal skeleton to keep them standing.
The Rusties didn't put their factories underground, and they all worked together like bees in a hive instead of at home. (Page 62)
This quote describing how in today's world people work in corporations. They do not work from their homes. People leave their homes and go to work every day.
On school trips, the teachers always made the Rusties out to be so stupid. You almost couldn't believe people lived like this, burning trees to clear land, burning oil for heat and power, setting the atmosphere on fire with their weapons. But the moonlight she could imagine people scrambling over flaming cars to escape the crumbling city, panicking in their flight form this untenable pile of metal and stone. (Page 62)
First, today we are extremely wasteful with our natural resources. We are using up the earth's resources faster than the earth can replenish them. Interestingly, cars are mentioned here. In Tally's world there are no cars, there are only hover-vehicles. Cars are presently one of the main modes of transportation in today's world.
“It's called a roller coaster. Remember, I told you I'd show you one.” (Page 63)
Roller coasters are seen as a form of entertainment in today's society. Roller coasters is common in the USA and are enjoyed by humans.
From these quotes, I see ample evidence that the Rusties are representing humans in today's world. Unfortunately, the Rusties almost destroyed the earth. I think, Scott Westerfeld is trying to show the reader that if we are not careful today with natural resources we will end up destroying the earth.
Questions: Do you agree or disagree? Any other thoughts?
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5 comments:
I thought the same thing when the topic of the Rusties came up in the book. It reminded me a lot of the Disney movie Wall-E, set in the future where humans have completely destroyed the earth due to over-consumption. The humans go to live in space, leaving behind small robots (Wall-E's) to clean up the mess they've left behind
Scott Westerfeld probably included the Rusties in the book to demonstrate what a wasteful society we've become. I'm sure that future generations will look back on the way we live and think we're wasteful, the same way we look back at earlier generations and think the same thing.
I agree. Westerfield does a good job of showing the effects of how we (the rusties) are destroying the earth and the possible consequences of it. I think that the way that he mentions how the rusties were wasteful and did not care about the earth is important for young people to read and understand. This is a good way to make them aware of the current state of our environment and some possibilities of what could happen to our planet if we continue to mistreat it.
I thought that we were definitely the Rusties. All the description given throughout the book sound a lot like the world we currently live in. We just use and use not really caring about the amount of damage we are doing to the world. In one of my other classes we were discussing human impacts on earth including greenhouse emissions and global warming. Many people still don’t want to believe that humans are responsible for these things, but there is a lot of evidence showing that we must be a major cause. We were shown evidence that greenhouse gases were at a constant level from 1000 BC until the 1800’s when our industrial revolution began. Greenhouse gases have been increasing rapidly since that point and there is a 90% chance that this will cause a 3 to 9 degree increase in temperature this century. This warming is not only destroying the world for us it will also cause mass extinction of plants and animals throughout the world.
I completely agree.
We are most definitely the Rusties in that we are going to use and abuse until we end up getting destroyed because we can no longer be sustained by the environment we created.
I was reading an interview that Westerfeld had done in which he had said that, indeed, the Rusties were based off of society today. I think, in some aspect, it is unfortunately due to our obsession with excess. We always have too much of everything, or are in the pursuit of more of something, or are obsessed because we don't have enough of something else. It's always more this, more that. I think that, as shown by the Rusties, that is a dangerous situation to get into.
When you revolve your life around the dependence on other objects or materials, once those possessions are gone then you don't know how to survive without them. In the absence of our addictions, we will crumble because- again, as shown by the Rusties- dependency on acquisition will lead towards destruction.
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