51 pages • 1 hour read
Marie LuLegend
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Trials and Scores
One of the most prominent symbols in the Legend series is the infamous Trial: a test that all citizens are required to take on their 10th birthday. The Trial uses multiple choice questions, an interview, and physical tests to determine the value of its citizens. The Trials and the subsequent scores represent the idea of value in this dystopian society: A high score means someone worthy of praise, opportunity, and safety. A low score, however, means a person has no value and is ultimately disposable.
Day goes through the possible scores, beginning with the perfect score: 1500. He assumes that if someone earns a perfect score on the Trial, they probably get “lots of money and power” (7). Higher scores yield “joy and happiness” (7) in the form of wealth, access to better educational opportunities, and safety from the so-called labor camps and dangerous jobs that await those with lower scores. Just like in the real world, this fictional version of America holds an interesting trend. According to Day, “It’s almost always the slum-sector kids who fail” (7). Children from wealthy families have access to tutors and more opportunities to prepare for the Trial, while poor children never have the opportunity to better themselves.
The irony, of course, is that Day himself earned a perfect score and was punished for it. He was ripped from his family, subjected to horrifying medical procedures for the sake of experimentation, and was left for dead. Despite the societal expectation that high scores mean more security and opportunities, Day’s story shows that the Trial is a farce: At the end of the day, the Republic is the ultimate judge of a person’s value, and the entire nation is at the mercy of this tyrannical government.
Plague and Plague Cure
Disease is always a frightening concept, and by using the word “plague” instead of “virus,” Lu summons up imagery of something far more deadly and pervasive. The plague represents the fight for survival in the Republic, the lengths the country will go to defeat its enemies, and its cruelty towards its citizens.
When a person is infected with the plague, there are limited options in the Republic. A wealthy family can afford plague medicine easily, but the poor cannot. Wealthy families receive annual vaccinations against the plague, while the poor are left unprotected. When an infected woman emerges from her home at the beginning of the novel, “her skin [...] cracked and bleeding everywhere” (4), she is not greeted with sympathy or offers for treatment. Instead, a soldier “lifts his gun and aims. A volley of sparks engulfs the infected woman” (4). The poor are put down like rabid dogs, and the rich never have to face this reality.
Day’s scramble to save up enough money for a plague cure demonstrates the exorbitant cost of life-saving treatment. Day collects “twenty-five hundred Notes,” which is “enough to feed [his family] for months,” but it is still “not enough to buy [his] family vials of plague medicine” (9). Meanwhile, June realizes that a single drinking glass in her family’s high-rise apartment costs enough to buy a plague cure. The poor are the only ones who have to worry about buying a plague cure, yet the cost is intentionally too high for them to be able to buy it.
Metias and Day both realize that this isn’t accidental but designed intentionally. Metias tells June in his blog posts that the Republic creates the plagues, and “they use the plagues to cull the population of weak genes, the same way the Trials pick out the strongest” (246). The plague serves a dual purpose: As the Republic gears up for war against the Colonies and prepares to utilize biological warfare, it needs to test its tactics on those that it considers lower forms of life. And in a society where a person’s value is determined by a test they take when they are 10 years old, the Republic decides that poor people are less valuable and perfect “lab rats” (247) for their sick experiments.
June begins to realize that “behind the plague is the Republic itself” (250) and that the Republic has used this virus to control its population in the most insidious ways imaginable. When Metias tells June the truth about the plague, this is the final straw and the last detail needed to convince her to jump ship. The plague is the ultimate symbol of the nation’s depravity, and June will no longer be a part of a system that hurts its own people so explicitly.
Day's Pendant
Day’s pendant was given to him when he was a child, right before his father was taken away and killed by the Republic. It is described as “a circular disk with nothing engraved on it” (49), and June guesses that “it’s worth nothing in terms of money” (49). The pendant is not a fine piece of jewelry but a symbol of Day’s connection to his father and evidence of the Republic’s attempts to cover up the past.
Day wore the pendant on the day of his Trial, and when he breaks into the hospital to steal plague cures, he loses the necklace. He grieves the loss, and at first, the reader is led to believe that the plain pendant only holds sentimental value because it was given to him by his father. June tries to crack the code of the strange necklace, and she guesses that it was probably “given to him by someone he has emotional ties with” (49), but she suspects that there is more to the necklace. June believes “it has a secret” (49), and her suspicions are correct.
Towards the novel’s end, Day remembers the day his father brought an unusual coin home from his travels. The coin shows “A bird on one side, a man’s profile on the other,” and the words “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN GOD WE TRUST, QUARTER DOLLAR embossed on one side, and LIBERTY and 1990 on the other” (233). The coin is an American quarter, and Day’s father explains that this coin proves that the United States was a real place. This moment shows how the Republic has gone to great lengths to erase any evidence of the past, and for some reason, it is determined to conceal the history of the United States from its people. Day’s father decides that they must guard the coin because “for all [they] know, this might be the last coin of its kind in the world” (233). He suggests putting the coin in a locket or a pendant and giving it to one of their sons, so it will be hidden in plain sight and won’t be searched in the event of a raid on their house. The pendant—Day’s pendant—holds the forbidden quarter, proof of the Republic’s lies and hope for a world beyond its oppressive reach. The necklace symbolizes hope, truth, family bonds, and rebellion.
Metias's Journals and Blog
When Metias is murdered, June begins to explore his old journals. Although the world around them has gone digital and most records are kept on computers, Metias chooses to keep handwritten paper journals. June credits this to the fact that Metias “always loved [their] parents’ old-fashioned ways” (45), but he hints that there might be more to this decision. Metias’s journals and the blog connected to them represent his growing doubts about the Republic, the truth it has fought to conceal, and the revelation that resulted in Metias’s murder.
Before he is killed, Metias hints that something is on his mind. His last words to June are, “We have a lot to talk about” (21), and June scours through his journals after his death to see if she can uncover any hint of what Metias was planning to tell her. She discovers a coded message in Metias’s journals, and because the Republic was likely watching his movements in the final months of his life, Metias carefully leaves a trail that only June would have the patience or understanding to uncover. June uncovers “twenty-four misspelled words” in Metias’s journals, and she notices that “all of them come from the journals written in the last few months” (240).
When June uncovers Metias’s secret blog, she is met with a tidal wave of information. Metias writes that “this is for June’s eyes only. [...] I have no other place to write this, so I’ll write it here. For you” (242), which implies that June was the only person Metias trusted with this information. The only reason he kept these details from her for so long was that he “couldn’t quite bring [him]self to tell a fifteen-year-old girl what [he] found” (242). Metias has cared for June for so long that he still sees her as a child who needs to be protected, but in the final months of his life, Metias realizes that June could handle the truth. The journals and blog also represent his growing trust in his sister and the fact that he is starting to see her as a young adult instead of his baby sister.
Still, Metias urges June to be smart about this information. He begs her to keep what she has learned to herself because he would “kill [him]self if the Republic [struck] [her] down for reacting to knowledge that [he] gave [her]” (245). He urges her to rebel quietly if she chooses to, but he ultimately leaves the decision up to her. The blog offers June a choice: continue to serve the Republic with this new knowledge or rebel. He offers her one final piece of advice: “If you want to rebel, rebel from inside the system” (245).
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By Marie Lu
