Crossed
The book I read was titled Crossed and the author was Ally Condie. The main characters are Cassie, Ky, Indie, Eli, Hunter, and Xander. In this book, The Society, or the government, chooses whom you can marry or love. Cassie, a teenager girl, is matched to another boy Xander whom she likes as a friend but doesn’t want to marry him. Cassie runs away from her family and the government so she could be with Ky. Ky is in a manual labor or death camp. Ky manages to escape from the death camp into a series of canyons where he finds food and books. Cassie, through friends, finds Ky in the canyons. While in the canyons, Cassie, Ky, Eli, and Indie meet Hunter who is part of another secret society, The Farmers, that left The Society. The four teenagers and the adult go on a scouting mission in the canyons and find a secret Society base and steal supplies.
The literary techniques that were in this particular novel were flashbacks and plot twists. There were multiple plot twists, but there was one plot that stood out. It was when the group of teenagers realized that The Rising is real and that there is actually a secret society that exists and is plotting to take over the current tyrannical government. A foreshadowing that stood out was when Cassie kept remembering her dead grandfather’s words, which were “Don’t go gentle”. Her grandfather was a part of this secret society which she finds out later in the book.
There are many examples of poetry in this fascinating book. In these poems there are personification, similes, and hyperboles. An example of personification in this story is “Wind having fingers” and this was a poem that was written on a gravestone. An example of a simile is “They dropped like flakes”. I can’t think of how this is important, I just got them out of a poem someone found. An example of a hyperbole is “The Sahara is too little price for thy right hand”. This was interesting because The characters didn’t know what the Sahara is.. These were all from one poem in the book.
I loved this book because the author wrote it so that as the reader you see Cassie’s and Ky’s point of view. This really helped me to understand what was going on throughout the whole story. For instance the book kept alternating between Cassie and Ky’s viewpoint. Another trick that the author used was she expertly placed her plot twist throughout the story. This book kept me on my toes, and it was hard sometimes to put the book away. Sometimes at night, I wanted to keep reading, but had to get to bed. I loved this book so much that I can’t wait to read the 3rd book in this series, “Reached”.
