LitPick Review
Governcorp is a collection of businesses that took over when the world was falling apart. Governcorp suppresses freedom of speech and uses the Comfort Center to drug people into becoming non-argumentative citizens. Jenny is the perfect citizen, who wants to work as a Safety Officer for Governcorp. Hannah is a new citizen formerly from the Homesteads, slums hidden behind a veneer of pretty fences. Hannah struggles with reconciling her conscience between helping her dad fit in with their new life and trying to figure out if Governcorp should be revolted against. Jenny values her life and dreams as a Safety Officer above her conscience. The world described in this novel is a terrible one in which people must be silent in order to be citizens and laws are broken whenever Governcorp decides it is so. This novel is a dramatization of today's world, where constant media invade our lives and warp our thinking. In this novel blindly following someone is right, and someone being hurt or killed in the Homesteads doesn’t matter to the government. When the people from the Homesteads decide to revolt against Governcorp and its use of Protectors, a euphemism for guns, Jenny must choose what she values. Does Jenny value her new buddy, Hannah, enough to break the laws she has loved for so long? Will Hannah forsake her old life for a new one as a citizen?
Opinion:
The struggle Hannah is put through along with naive Jenny tagging along is both angering and sickening. The reader is forced to see things from both sides and hate the blindness that occurs when others are brainwashed their entire lives. This book is not necessarily a fun read, but it provides a crucial look into vastly different lives and viewpointss. If read correctly, this book opens the reader's mind while also conveying the feeling that our society, not just the one in the book, is falling to pieces. The book ends in an expected yet still resented way, but the ending seems the best way to round out the ideals of the book. The imagery is adequate but doesn’t fully portray the vast difference between the Homesteads and the citizens' housing. Jenny is a very basic yet relevant character, and the multiple background characters are sometimes hard to tell apart but provide useful plot advances. Overall, I can't say I enjoyed the book for the fun of reading it. However, I enjoyed it because I was able to see our society and the people in it in a different light after reading the book, and for that, the book was worth reading.
