51 pages • 1 hour read
Cecelia AhernFlawed
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Morality Is Relative
One of the central plot points in Flawed is the difference between the Guild’s belief that morality is absolute and Celestine’s growing understanding of morality as relative. By contrasting the rule of law with ethical decision-making, Ahern explores what it means to do the right thing.
All parties within the narrative believe their actions are justified, based on rightful, moral intentions. However, they define morality differently, which leads to the central ideological conflict. On the one hand, the Guild believes that a code of conduct enforced by a higher authority is an effective means of maintaining social compliance. Celestine explains that the Guild’s rationale for not allowing mistakes is to prevent negative consequences:
Before I was born, there was a great recession in this country [...], and the leaders were blamed. [...] They were evil people; they had destroyed families and homes, and they were to suffer. [...] As a result, [society] demanded leaders who would not learn from hindsight—leaders who would not make the mistakes in the first place. [It] was decided that any person who made any error in judgment was to be rooted out of society entirely (50-51).
On the other hand, people who support the Flawed cause, such as Celestine, Pia Wang, and Alpha Dockery, believe in accountability, redemption, and growth as a way to create social progress. In a significant parallel with the Guild’s philosophy, Alpha points out:
If you make a mistake, you learn from it. If you never make a mistake, you’re never the wiser. How can [these so-called leaders] have learned what’s right and wrong, how could they have learned anything about themselves? [...] The more mistakes you have made, the more you have learned (257).
Celestine’s journey highlights the relativity of moral and ethical decision-making. Rather than a fixed set of rules, moral behavior depends on a specific context. For instance, when Celestine helps the old Flawed man on the bus, Celestine acts out of compassion. However, Judge Crevan offers an alternative explanation, which is that she wanted to help the other passengers by getting rid of the disturbance. While the end result is the same, the two versions of the story stem from opposite moral standpoints. This suggests that actions can’t be detached from intent and context.
Celestine’s decisions are driven by compassion, even when it leads her to defy unfair laws, whereas Judge Crevan is motivated by power and greed so he can appear rightful. Their conflict symbolizes the difference between relative and absolute morality. In the end, Lisa Life’s headline offers a nuanced, balanced definition of morality when she sums up Celestine as “Compassion and Logic: The Perfect Pairing” (243).
Self-Agency
Throughout the novel, Celestine’s agency is repeatedly challenged or denied, which heightens her identity crisis as well as the oppression faced by the Flawed. Celestine learns to act rather than be used by others for their own gain, mirroring the growing rebellion against the Guild’s oppressive authority.
At first, Celestine is under the pervasive control of the Guild’s ideology, which she actively espouses because it benefits her. She believes, for example, that her grandfather’s warning—“It’s about power. Control. This society we live in” (88)—is merely conspiracy thinking. However, when Judge Crevan tries to maintain control over her, she realizes that his authority, disguised as helpfulness, “sounds like a threat” (60). In fact, she understands that her case has become a catalyst for conflicting political interests, making her an example: “One side wants to use me to prove the Guild is biased; the Guild wants to use me to prove that it isn’t” (65). She feels powerless and isolated, especially when she finds her rights restricted by her Flawed status. In the initial stage after her branding, Celestine remarks: “Everyone speaks on my behalf now [...]. They speak about me like I’m not in the room” (130).
Celestine slowly regains agency thanks to her relationships with other characters. Her grandfather acts as a mentor and asks her pointed rhetorical questions: “They’ll be watching you, all of them, and who would you prefer they watch? You or the girl you’re pretending to be?” (90). Pia, after working for Crevan’s heavily censored media network, tells Celestine—“you’ve inspired me to find my own voice” (247). Even Summer stages a silent protest and defiantly proclaims: “I’ll show them what Flawless is all about” (252). Celestine, who first inspired these characters through narratives she did not control, is in turn inspired to reclaim her agency. When Pia asks whether she intends to take Crevan down, Celestine wonders for the first time: “I have power?” (175).
Celestine’s meeting with Alpha, who despite her good intentions tries to use her to further her own cause, is a turning point for Celestine. When Alpha shows Celestine her “F” tattoo, for instance, Celestine is taken aback:
‘Who put that there?’
‘I did.’
‘But I would do anything to get mine off and you put it there yourself?’
‘It’s different when the power is taken away from you,’ [Alpha] says gently (257).
This is the first time a character explicitly mentions the importance of free will, and Celestine realizes the significance: “It’s time to take control of myself now” (259). At the end of the novel, she decides to fight Crevan on her own terms: She embraces her identity and solves her problems herself. The Guild, the media, the Flawed movement, and individual characters all tried to speak for Celestine, twist her narrative, or use her fame to further their agendas. Instead, she reclaims power over her actions, echoing her first step toward independence when she stood up for Clayton Byrne on the bus. Celestine demonstrates the importance of responsibility, accountability, and self-determination.
Fear and Isolation as Methods of Control
Throughout the story, the Guild, and especially Judge Crevan, uses fear and isolation as methods of control. These are the antitheses of compassion and community, which are the basis of an informed, context-based vision of morality. Celestine’s fear and sense of isolation are initially what prevent her from realizing her true power over Crevan.
The Guild feeds into people’s fear both to maintain order and to keep the Flawed oppressed. Even before her downfall, Celestine implicitly understands the power of fear when the Whistleblower’s sirens ring out: “The sound makes me jump in my seat, startled, and it sends my heart beating wildly, every inch of me sensing danger. [Though] I never lived through any war, it gives me a sense of how people must have felt then before being attacked” (8). The public trials are meant to fearmonger, resembling public executions that catalyze a society’s anxieties. The Flawed, as Celestine remarks, are held up “as a mirror of [people’s] worst nightmares. Scapegoats for all that is wrong in their lives” (76). As a result, the Guild ensures that its subjects are both afraid of its enforcers and of the consequences of being accused as a Flawed, thus pressuring them to follow strict rules of conduct.
The Guild enforces isolation as a means to maintain control, as segregated people cannot organize against authority. Before she experiences ostracization herself, Celestine witnesses her neighbor’s. She immediately distances herself from the threat that associating with a Flawed might pose and ignores Colleen Tinder. When Celestine herself is branded, Colleen rejects her, which makes her accepted by her peers again. The social hierarchy created by the Guild promotes lack of compassion and, therefore, lack of solidarity between social groups.
Celestine’s isolation during her trial and subsequent ostracization from society emphasizes the Guild’s desire to divide people. The restrictive rules she has to follow prevent her from fully participating in social events or gathering with other Flawed individuals. At first, Celestine’s isolation and stigmatization, coupled with her fear of Judge Crevan, leave her hopeless. However, she realizes that the Guild relies on that to ensure compliance and submission to its rule, which goes against its proclaimed ideals of justice and honesty.
Celestine’s newfound understanding prompts her to remark, when Logan and his friends kidnap her: “I have gone through what they seem to fear. They have brought me here because they are attracted to their fears. They want to analyze it. Understand it. Rise above it. Laugh at it. But I have lived it. It is my tragedy that they fear. And that gives me strength” (221). Celestine decides to face her fear, noting that “to be courageous is to feel fear within, every step of the way. [...] It takes courage to overcome, but it takes extreme fear to be courageous (107). She also embraces her ostracization and learns to rely on trusted people, like Carrick, Pia, and her family.
Finally, there is a symbolic parallel between the moment that signaled her downfall, when she helped an old man that reminded her of her granddad, and the moment when she ignited a rebellion, when she helped her injured grandfather. While the first event caused her fear and isolation, the second symbolizes compassion and justice.
