How to Change

Summary

Prenna discovers that all her actions and conversations are controlled by the community counselors through a pair of special glasses that all the community members have. The community counselors don’t want to better the world as they promised, they’re only hiding from the future’s chaos. One day, while Prenna is heading to meet the old man, Ethan appears and tells her that he knows her secret and that they have to believe in everything the old man says to avoid humanities destruction. Prenna leaves quickly to stay away from Ethan and goes to a parking lot where she finds the old man lying on the floor almost dead, the killer gone. Ethan arrives shortly and escapes with Prenna; she wants to go home first, even though it’s risky because the community members don’t want them to avoid the upcoming murder. When they reach Prenna’s house, she is taken by the counselors to a place far away, a place where it’s almost impossible to escape.


Quote 1

“And as he drones on about the deep importance of trust, I sit there gazing at the jelly beans and finally coming to terms with a deep and basic conflict: How can you fix anything if you can’t change anything?" (p. 67)

I think that what Prenna is saying here is very true. How can we fix anything if we can’t change anything? I believe it’s a matter of wisdom. If, to fix something, we can’t change it, then we can’t really do anything. But what we can do is try to not make the same mistake twice.


Quote 2

“And here, I realize, is a thing you can’t undo. When you open yourself to somebody, when you feel these things that you feel, well, what can you do? You can try to ignore it, maybe you can try to forget about it, but you can’t undo it and you can’t give it back.” (p. 75)

What Prenna means in this quote is that she is falling in love with Ethan even though she isn’t supposed to; the community counselors would never accept it because Prenna is from the future and Ethan is not. I think this quote is connected with the other. She fell in love with him and there’s nothing she can do to change her feelings so quickly. Prenna must, for the safety of the people, keep it to herself.


Conclusion

I think that in the next chapters, Ethan will free Prenna and together, they will try to avoid the murder. I believe that they will be persecuted by the community counselors while they are trying to find the man who will be killed or the murder. Finally, I don’t know if Prenna and Ethan will be able to save the world. I once heard in a movie that we can’t change the past, we can only learn from it, so I don’t know if the author agrees with this and incorporates it in her book. Maybe the characters will not save the world, but they can learn how to make it better in the future. Something I really like about this book is that it connects with real life in many aspects. For example, in modern day, Zika is a virus which is killing many people and spreading very quickly. In the story, one of the main reasons why the people from the future escape from the future is because of a Zika epidemic.