unwind

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Unwind is a science fiction novel written by Neal Shusterman. The story takes place in the future in the United States of America. After a Second Civil War, also known as “The Heartland War” the Pro-life and Pro-choice armies were fighting over abortion, but they managed to negotiate a deal to end the war. Both parties came to an understanding and ended the war when “The Bill of Life” was passed. The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent may choose to retroactively “abort” a child on the condition that the child’s life doesn’t “technically” end. This process is called “unwinding” (Shusterman 1). The unwinds are technically not dead since almost 100% of the organs are reused. From that moment, unwinding was morally acceptable and was very common in society. This book tells the journey of three main characters that were sent to be unwound, but managed to escape. Conner Lassiter, Risa Ward and Levi Calder now have to survive and avoid being captured by the juvenile police.
As I was reading this novel, the first thought that came into my mind was that I found it amazing and at the same time disturbing to think that people were able to graft human body parts from one person to another. On the other hand, I also thought that it was awful and revolting that parents could easily give up on their children and send them to be unwound without any remorse. An example of this is at the very beginning of the novel when Connor found in his father’s home office his unwind order and three tickets to the Bahamas for his father, his mother and his brother (Shusterman 6). This suggests that they were...

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...would have changed her fate to something more positive. Lastly, I would have made sure that Roland and Connor buried the hatchet and became friends and helped each other to fight against the evil instead of killing him.
The thing that confused me the most in the novel was the Admiral and his intentions of saving the unwinds. At first, I thought that he was an evil man that used the helpless kids to his advantage, for example pretending to save them, but then betraying them by selling them to the cops or using their organs to his benefit. As the story progressed, I found out that he really wanted to prevent children to be unwounded and even sacrificed his career to this secret project. By the end, I think that this was satisfactorily resolved because he and his wife were able to gather all of Harlan's parts in one place, symbolically making their son whole again.

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