MATCHED, by Ally Condie

If ever a book was written that I wish I could call my own, it might be this one, MATCHED, by Ally Condie. It was written with spirit, and with perfection of beauty in word, thought, and deed. Poetry. Precision. Metaphor, simile, imagery. Literary Elements.

Here are my rough, incomplete notes after a first read. Feel free to send me yours because I am in love with MATCHED.


Numbered Similes and unnumbered questions
1--We are like the microcards in the research library at Second School--each of us neatly tucked into a slot. (31)
2--The screen tells me what patterns I'm supposed to find and the numbers begin to scroll up on the screen, like little white soldiers on a black field waiting for me to mow them down. (32)
3--The numbers fly into their spots like flakes driven by the wind. (32)
4--With her voice soft like the blankets she settled around me, she asked, "Did you hear us talking?" (57)
5--The flakiness of the sugared crust, which reminds me of crystals on an edge of snow. The red-stained berries smeared across the plate, ripe and surely full of taste. The words I've said cling to my mind like the pastry does to the heavy silver fork. (60)
6--No, he says, his voice sharp, and then he bends creakily. As if he were made of old wood, an old tree, stiff wooden joints. (61)
7--The thought comes into my mind like a sideways glance, like a flash of blue next to me. (91)
8--"Welcome," the Officer says in a voice as clipped and sharp as his hair. (93)
9--My arm brushes against a leaf and a drop of dew falls onto the paper with a sound like ripe fruit dropping to the ground. (95)
10--"I saw you," he says, his voice soft and deep like water falling in the distance. (102) Q--Why is Ky always associated with water and the color blue? Why are Ky's eyes blue? Why can she think better just picturing his eyes?)
11--The questions in my mind seem to make a humming sound, like that of the bugs in the woods earlier. (104) (The hum is a metaphor for?)
--a favorite=When she walks back into the room, her shoes make stabbing, serious sounds on the wood floor. She means business. (111)
--the roots of the baby tree from the Arboretum are a metaphor for? (113) What is the secret thing Ky brings with him from his home, and what is it a metaphor for?
--Condie uses the words "slides" and "tangled" over and over. Why?
--My feet hit smack-slap on the belt of the tracker and I pound the worry out of me step by step. Step by step by step by step by step. What is this an example of? 114
--"I've got blue and green now. All I need is the red one and I'll be an adult." What or who do these colors represent? Explain symbolism, irony and metaphor Condie uses here.
--Greenspace, green tablet," Grandfather said, and then he looked at me and smiled. "Green eyes on a green girl." Why does Grandfather label Cassia "green girl"? (119)
--Cassia eats "dry triangles of toast" for breakfast. Is there a metaphor here? (121)
--Cassia travels by air train. What is the air train symbolic of? (124)
12--From the raised air-train platform, the rubble of the old library appears to be covered in enormous black spiders. The huge black incinerators spread their leglike tubes out across the bricks and over the edges into the basement of the library. (125)
--"The books' backs are broken; their bones, thin and delicate, fall out. The workers step on them. The bones crackle under their boots like leaves." (127)
--"One leaf escapes. Caught on a swirl of wind from the impending thunderstorm, it rises up, almost reaching my feet as I stand near the edge of this small canyon that was once a library." (127)
Read page 127 and list/describe at least five literary elements Condie brings in to play here.
--(143)--Queen Anne's Lace--"What's important is that you see the lace in front of you, too many little flowers to count, but you try anyway..." Where is the symbolism and metaphor here?
What is the symbolism of the "newrose plant" and it's roots? (143)
--(144)--"The evening slides in slowly, darkening the sky by degrees." What is the use for the word "slides"? evening slides
--(144)--her hands are stained red, like the red on Ky's face.
--(149)--"We slide into the nearest seats..." 149 we slide
--(152)--"For what is the point of having something lovely if you never share it?" A memorable line.
--(154)--"The two women step back and the older Official slides a small screen across the table toward me. 'Are you ready?'" official slides? no, screen slides Who is sliding what?
13--I let it all go like a child with a handful of balloons on her First Day at First School. (154)
--"Only when I hold onto nothing can I be the best, only then can I be what they expect me to be." (154) The balloons fly away right before this line. Why are balloons a metaphor? What do they represent?
--"He shuts the metal door behind him. It makes a thick, solid sound, a sound of finality. As I listen to the nothing that follows I suddenly realize why Ky likes to blend in. It is a strange feeling, knowing for certain that the Officials watch me more closely. It is as though I stood in the way when that door swung shut and I find myself pinned now by the weight of their observation--a concrete thing, real and heavy." (155) What does imagery accomplish here?
--The tray falls on the floor and the cake breaks apart, like soil falling from roots. (156) Why is the mention of "roots" so important to the story?
--Cassia is so convinced the red tablet kills that she dreams of giving hers to Em at Em's Matching Banquet. Is she wrong? Why does Condie use "fluttering"? Are there birds in the city? Where are the birds? "Behind Em the screen flashes on with her Match--right in time for him to see Em fall down, dead. Her body makes a heavy sound when it falls, in contrast to the lightness of her eyes fluttering shut, of her dress fluttering in folds around her, of her hands fluttering open like the wings of something small." Is there more symbolism behind the use of the word "fluttering"? (155-157)
--"When she stepped off the train, your grandmother said to me, 'She still has the sun on her face.'" (160) Why is this an important line?
--"At the same time I hear a word so soft and quiet I wonder if he said it up on the hill and the wind has just now carried it down to me." How does this sentence make you feel? (172) "The word is yes."
--"If I tell Ky these words, I step into an even more dangerous place than I was before. It will put Ky in danger." Is the use of danger a selling point of this novel?
14--I don't see any angels and they don't fly down on their cotton-soft wings to whisper in my ear. (175)
--"Two lives, I whisper to myself. The words hush and hang in the room, too soft for the port to hear above the other sounds in the house." (177)
15--The moon, hanging heavy and low in the sky near the horizon, is a harvest-yellow slice like the melon we get to eat during the Autumn Holiday. (184) All colors are important in this novel. What is the significance of the color yellow in this simile? Is there any significance that it is associated with the moon or with the harvest?
---the word memory appears--(191)
---couples newly Contracted--(192)
16--"Match. But now I feel like finding out about him is one of the ways I find out about myself. I did not expect to love his words. I did not expect to find myself in them. Is falling in love with someone's story the same thing as falling in love with the person himself?" (196) Question simile.
--"I wish we could, but it's too dangerous." What I risk has a limit. I won't risk Bram. (203) What are the stakes?
--"There is too much rain here. He could drown." (207) What is "rain" a metaphor for?
--"In the second picture, he's here in the Borough. I see a maple tree behind him." (207) How is the maple tree a metaphor?
--"Rain falls in both pictures, but in the first one his mouth is open, his head tipped back, he drinks from the sky." (157) What does this image represent?
--"In the second one his head is down, his eyes panicked, the rain thick around him, streaming off him like a waterfall. There is too much rain rain. He could drown. When it rains, I remember are the words written at the bottom." What does Ky remember when it rains? Here again, Ky is associated with water. In the next line, the sun is a "burning evening sun sets in a clear sky." Why? (157)
--"Those words are quiet here under the trees but they sing loudly in my heart, louder than all the Hundred Songs caroled all at once. And his eyes are shadowed underneath, from thinking about me." (211) What do the shadows represent? Are they a metaphor?
--"I want to reach up and touch that skin under his eyes, the one place I've seen any vulnerability in him, make him feel better. And then I could run my fingers there, across his cheekbones, down to his lips, to the place where his jaw meets his neck, where his neck meets his shoulder line." (211) Reader take note: Condie writes love, not sex. (Can you write love as beautifully? Will you accept that challenge?)
17--Trees that fell have not been cleared away and lie like giant bones across the forest floor. (211-212)
--"Some things are created to be together." (213) Pretty line.
--"A song that just the two of us know." (214) Romance.
18--It takes me a little while to learn s but I like the way it looks--like something leaning into the wind. (214)
19--I sit between Ky and Xander, equidistant from both of them. It's as if I'm a piece of metal and they are two magnets and there's a pull from either side. (228)
20--I think I see the slightest hint of a smile on his lips but I can't be sure; it's gone faster than a snowflake on an air-train track. (229)
21--When he looks back down from the ceiling he meets my gaze and holds it, as he held the game piece earlier before putting it down. (230)
22--Ky pauses for a moment before he answers, his eyes wide and deep like the oceans in other tales or like the sky in his own. (236)
(237-238) more of the word tangled appearing.
A love scene pg 237-238. How does Condie express love?
"...but I stay right there next to him. He looks down at me, shadows from the leaves (he's a shadow in the pool, has shadows under his eyes, and now more shadows appear) crossing his face, and also sun (more sun). He's looking at my lips, which makes it hard to speak, even though I know what I want to say." (237)
"And there's so much to see. They are blue, and black, and other colors, too, and I know some of what they've seen and what I hope they see now. Me. Cassia. What I feel, who I am." ...
"Everything," I tell him. "They're everything."
Neither of us moves for a moment, locked instead in each other's eyes and in the branches of this Hill we might never finish climbing. I'm the one who moves first. I step past him and push my way through some more tangled leaves, climb over a small fallen tree." ...
"I'm falling in love. I am in love." (
(239) choice and danger are here together.
(239) "a spider hurries away." What does the spider represent? "He has to push away a layer of leaves and a spider hurries away." Is there any significance that the spider is associated with the leaves, or rather, how did Condie use the leaves and the spider earlier to build this eerie image. What do the leaves represent? (239) What is hurrying away from what? Who is hurrying away from what or whom?
--"One sounds metallic and man-made and the other is high and clear and lovely." (240) Which one is Xander and which one is Ky? Why?
--(241)--danger, "I cannot go gently now." Explain the significance of Grandfather's poem and
Cassia's character arc.
23--She moistens her lips, which are as dry as the fountain behind her. (246)
--(248)danger
24--I'll tell her and everyone else that I know: they are giving us pieces of a real life instead of the whole thing. And I'll tell her that I don't want my life to be samples and scraps. A taste of everything but a meal of nothing. (249)
25--They have perfected the art of giving us just enough freedom; just enough that when we are ready to snap, a little bone is offered and we roll over, belly up, comfortable and placated like a dog I saw once when we visited my grandparents in the Farmlands. (249)
--"The maple trees have become too much of a problem. The leaves get too messy in the fall. They're not growing uniformly." ... "They don't know they are dead yet." ... "Tearing up the roots will be the hard part." (252-253) Trees, leaves, roots are all metaphors and an image used by Condie. Explain.
26--As I watch her go, the guilt slices quick through me like the cuts in the tree. (254)
---"Have you heard of the prisoner's dilemma?" Ky asks me. (260)
---"At the end of the first successful day, the children bring a small cake home to eat after dinner, along with a tangle of brightly colored balloons." (263) tangle, balloons, both seen earlier in text, now they are matched together. and the cake has roots.
27--"I love you." Lightning. Once it has forked, hot white, from sky to earth, there is no going back. (275)
28--What will it feel like, his lips on mine? Like a secret told, a promise kept? Like that line in the poem---a shower of all my days---silvery rain falling all around me, where the lightning meets the earth? (275-276) ky is paired with shower
---"I see glimpses of white through the trees, and I know they are not the birds we saw earlier. These white figures aren't made for flight." (277) What does the color white represent? Who wears white in the story?
29--The four of us sit together in the sea of blue, the train twisting and turning like a river running, and I know it's hard to fight against a current as strong as the Society. (278)
---"Up ahead, I see Ky shift, stand. He doesn't have to reach up for the grips hanging from the ceiling; he keeps himself level and balanced as the train slides to a stop." (279) Finally, the word "slides" again. What is it's significance here? Contrast Condie's use of the word here as compared to earlier in the text.
---"Everything is gray. Except for the dark-blue workers and their burned-red hands." Explain. (281)
---"So I force myself to stay clear and focused. I force myself to watch those bent backs and those burning hands and the vastness of all the refuse sliding silver along the tracks." (282) What does the color silver represent. Here it is paired with "sliding." Why? The word watch is in this sentence, too, and brings to mind Bram's silver watch. What do you think?
---Why are the stakes so high? (287)
---"But red is the first color of spring. It's the real color of rebirth. Of beginning." (289) Ky's hands are burned red. He had red on his face. The pill is red. Cassia's hands got stained red while planting newroses earlier in the story, then Cassia falls on the tracker and sees her rubbed raw and red skin. What is the connection? (289-291) How is the tracker, her high heart rate, the warnings, her thoughts of jumping, all a metaphor?
---"I am trapped in glass and I want to break out and breathe deep but I'm too afraid that it will hurt." (295) What does Cassia break out of glass, set free and give to Ky? Explain the metaphor.
---Queen Anne's lace, again. (297) Why do we see this again?
30--Drawing a deep breath, I look down at the pond. It isn't blue like the pool where we swim. This water is brownish-green under its silvery surface, messy with life. (305) How is this like her confession to Xander? Is it a quick foreshadowing of her confession?
---"It took two weeks before our peace was brokered, that day he saw me jump into the pool from the diving board after Grandfather jumped first." (306) Cassia thinks of "jumping" of the tracker on page 290; Xander saw her jump from the pool. "What would Grandfather think of this jump I'm taking." What do you think of Condie's use of the word jump?
31--After the scratchy wool of my sock, the silk feels cool in my hand, luxurious, like water. (310) What do "wool" and "silk" represent?
---What is Lon's characterization? (311)
---"If we're rally going to clear this Hill, I want to pull out the last tangles and twists so we can stand on the top free and open." (312) Here is the word "tangles" again. Why?
---Explain the story of Sisyphus and the rock. How is it a metaphor in the novel? (313)
---"I see the air train sliding along the tracks toward the station, but it's not the air train we usually ride, the silvery-white one. It's the charcoal-gray long-distance train, the kind that only departs from the City Center." (319) Condie uses the word "sliding" and then the colors. What's significant here?
32--I don't know if Ky speaks the words to my mind somehow or if I think them to myself or if Grandfather might be out there somewhere in this almost-night, calling words on the wind, words with wings like angels. (320)
----sliding (320)
---screaming in the borough---(317 and 321) high emotion
---"I know," I say, and my heart aches, and I stop again under my stone... ." (333) "And I suddenly remember a time back when I was small, when I used to look for the air train home to Stony Borough and we had paths made of low flat stones that led to our doors." (359) Does Cassia now have a stone? What do the stones leading up to her parents former house represent? Are they the same for Cassia? Do they appear anywhere else in the novel?
---Why did Condie choose the vocation of sorter for Cassia? Is it interesting that Cassia is a sorter, a person skilled at finding patterns, and Ky runs against the patterns?


The blue pill: The one that can save us; the one with enough nutrients to keep us going for several days if we have water, too. (age 10) Ky, the blue shadow in the water to save Xander.
The green pill: The one that calms us if we need calming. (age 13) What calms Cassia in the novel?
The red pill: The one that wipes memories. Can only take when a high official tells us to. (age 16) Ky has red scrapes.

Aberration: a person who committed an infraction--someone who deviates from the norm
Anomalie: a dangerous person needing to be separated from society; irregular, strange, unusual, unique, a deviation from an established rule, trend, pattern