Unwind, Neal Shusterman. Cycle 3 FCR Response, pages 1 to 335 (the whole book)
Short Summary
You would find Unwind under the category of Scientific Fiction in a bookstore. It is about three teenagers destined to be unwound. "Unwound" means to have a person's organs harvested from their bodies in order to save other more "worthy" people's lives. In the book, humans are so technologically advanced, they can divide a human into different pieces. However, the person is still in a sense alive. Alive, because they are still living in someone else's body. Unwinding is the product of the Second Civil War or Heartland War the war between pro-life and pro-choice sides. It ended with the Bill Of Life which said that all babies had to be taken care of since conception. But from the ages 13 to 18 a child's parents could decide to "get rid of" their child in a process called Unwinding. Conner, a teenager who has problems controlling his emotions, Risa ,a ward of The State, and Lev ,a tithe since birth are all bound by the same fate: to be Unwound. In a fight for survival and out of the need for companionship, they come together to attempt to escape a fate some would call worse than death.
On Conner's first day on the run he makes an almost fatal mistake: he leaves his cell phone on. The Juvey Cops have him surrounded when he makes a rash decision to bolt. He runs his way across an entire freeway causing a massive pile up, which allows Risa to escape the bus shuttling her to harvest camp. He also drags Lev from the Cadillac taking him to his own harvest camp, and gets Lev shot with a tranquilizer gun. Conner escapes into the woods, and to avoid further decetion shoots a cop with his own tranquil gun. This action cements his legend as the Arkon AWOL with many Unwinds similar to him.
The next day Lev reawakens from the tranquil dart and is furious with Connor and Risa from keeping him from his destiny, his unwinding. Tithes are born to be unwound in the name of god. Lev has always been different from everyone else, more honored and connected with God. When the right moment presents, its self he betrays Connor and Risa to escape back to his normal life. He is shocked when his Reverend tells him to run away from his unwinding. His life is flipped up side down, and he doesn't know what to do. Since he was born, he has always been told that being a tithe was an honor and his destiny. Now, the man who has always encouraged and made him feel safe about his tithing is telling him to run.
Lev and Risa get into a system where the final destination is the "Graveyard". Upon arrival they meet the Admiral who introduces them to their new way of life and survival. His mission is to protect approximately 450 Unwinds. They are thrown into a hard life, but not brutal, and after all Connor and Risa still have each other. While they are there though, trouble starts to brew. Roland, Connors archenemy, is quickly moving through the ranks and is filling everyone's head with thoughts of revolt. Then Lev shows up, definitely changed from when they last saw him. He now has a creepy quality that Risa cannot quite put her finger on but it upsets her.
When the Unwinds find that their supervisors the "Goldens'" have been killed, their pent up frustration explodes. They attack the Admiral and his right hand man in a frenzy spreading chaos through out the Graveyard. Finally Connor calms them down, but not in time to save Cleaver, who was brutally beat to death.
When Connor and a group of Unwinds fly the Admiral to the hospital Roland turns them all in. He thought that turning them in would make him walk away free, but he messes up and ends up going with Connor and Risa to the Happy Jack Harvest Camp. On the second day there, Connor discovers Lev has shown up as a tithe. There they are inspected and tested to see what price their organs will be worth; not knowing their harvest day draws nearer…
Diction and literary devices
Neal Shusterman is a good writer not at all on J.K Rowling's level, but definitely decent. One of the literary devices that I especially noticed was that he would mention a word (ex: tithe, clappers) that you didn't know, and then would wait to describe it. You would hear the word mentioned a bit in chapter one, and would start wondering what it meant. Then, in chapter two he would finally describe what it's meaning really was. I think this trick helped to keep you reading, so that you could find out what a "clapper" was.
I also noticed that he was very good and portraying a certain character's voice. For example this character CyFi; he was an older black boy that Lev met up with. He was very smart, but talked in an unsophisticated southern drawl. Neal Shusterman captured it perfectly, by changing some of the punctuation, and using slang words. Specifically talking about vocabulary, I would say his words weren't that rich. There are some books where every two paragraphs I need to look up a word (Ex: Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy); but I didn't actually finish the book because it was so tedious. I think that the vocabulary was absolutely appropriate for the targeted age group; which I would say is about 12-14. I'm not saying it was a childish book, I'm just saying that the dialogue was not that advanced. But, instead I think some of the ideas were quite intriguing.
Creative Reflection: The Sequel of Unwind: Rewind
After Connor, Risa, and Lev revolutionized the way people thought about Unwinds a new cult has formed. They call themselves Rewinds. Their mission is to put back together all the children who have been unwound, by locating everyone that has that specific person's organ in them, and extracting it and leaving the person to their own devices. Connor who has Roland's arm is the main target for the Rewinders. It turns out that their top priority is to rewind Roland, so that he can lead them.
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