Matched Ally Condie

   Matched by Ally Condie is one of my favorite books I have read. Matched is a story about a teen, Cassia who was raised in a government where the "society" decides everything for her. They collect data and use that to determine what job you have, the food you eat, the clothes you where and even your spouse. In the "society" when you reach a certain age you have a matching ceremony which tells you who your "match"/spouse will be for the rest of your life. The information is supposed to be accurate so they set you up with someone you are the most compatible with. But on the day of her ceremony when they revealed her match on the screen her best friend Xander's picture showed but for a split second some one else's pictured flash. The Society wanted her to believe that it was just a glitch but she soon found out that it is much more deeper than that.
   The initial story line isn't what made me love this book. Even though I love romance, it was actually the different arguments that the author was making that made me love the book. One of the main arguments Condie made in Matched was the importance of questioning the government and not just going with the flow, that it is OK to be different and make your own decisions. I got the idea from when Cassia's grandfather slipped her a poem that wasn't one of the select hundred, "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas. The message was to keep fighting. That made me think that she had another argument inside of the initial argument, that classic literature is still relevant and still important. For example, in the society (basically USA in the future after a disaster) they have a select 100 of songs, books, art, etc. that they all have to learn. That is the only selection to choose from and for the most part its geared to keeping the population under control. As a population they no longer have the knowledge of before the "hundred" things. So that is all they know. Cassia constantly has encounters after the "glitch" from the ceremony that shows that this "perfect" society isn't as sweet as she thought.
  I feel like I face those challenges daily with doing what I'm told all the time with no questions asked. It was the first book that made me realize that for the most part as a society we usually accept what they tell us and go with the flow. We used to have fight in us as a society but its slowly dying down. I think that maybe every once in a while we should take risks and ask questions and understand the environment we live in.