Introduction

The Young Elites is a novel by Marie Lu. The novel is set in the fantasy
world of Kennetra, a place that was affected by the blood fever.. It is the first novel in
the trilogy and sets the scene for the journey of Adelina Amouteru, as the protagonist
and the antagonist. It was published on August 25, 2015, by the Penguin Young Readers
Group Publishing House. Since then, the novel has gained recognition from The
Guardian, a British daily newspaper, and reached the fourth place in The New York
Times Best Seller list.

Brief Background on the Author

Marie Lu is the author of the Young Elites trilogy, the Legend trilogy, and many
more. In 1984, she was born in Beijing, China. While Lu moved to the U.S. at age 5, her
early life in China had a significant effect on her work. Lu and her family migrated to the
United States in1989, settling in Texas. At the University of Southern California, where she
was studying political science, she went to college. Lu initially considered becoming a
lawyer, but she decided to be an art director for a video game company. In interviews,
she said that certain Legend elements, such as the Skiz wars, were influenced by her
fondness for gaming. She would eventually leave her job as an art director to become
a writer full time.

As a young girl, Lu began writing, and for 12 years she published novels before
Legend, her first book approved for publication, reached bookshelves in 2011. Almost
immediately, Legend gained attention-CBS Films purchased the film rights before it was
even released.

In a handful of dystopian novels and series, Lu's work stands out. The Young Elites,
Lu's highly awaited second series' first book, departs from the dystopian origins of Lu but
promises to be as successful. Marie Lu has garnered numerous awards with her novels.
She was the #1 New York Times bestselling author. In the present, she spends her spare
time reading, drawing, and playing games. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her
husband, Primo Gallanosa.
 Detailed Synopsis of the Story

Adelina Amouteru survived her affliction with the blood fever. 10 years back, the
dangerous sickness moved through her country. The vast majority of the infected died,
while a large number of the youngsters who endure were left with strange markings. The
blood fever caused her eye to swell and was removed by a searing knife. Adelina's
dark hair turned silver, and now she has a prominent scar where her left eye used to be.
Her pitiless dad accepts she is a malfetto, an evil entity, demolishing their family's
acceptable name and holding up the traffic of their fortune. However, a portion of the
fever's survivors are reputed to have something beyond scars—they are accepted to
have baffling and ground-breaking endowments, and however their characters stay a
mystery, they have been known among the people as the Young Elites. Teren Santoro
serves the lord of the Kennetran Government. As Leader of the Inquisition Axis, he must
search out the Young Elites. He is tasked to obliterate them before they annihilate the
country. He accepts the Young Elites to be perilous and vindictive; however, it's Teren
who may have the haziest mystery of all.

Enzo Valenciano is an individual from the Dagger Society. This mystery order of
Young Elites searches out the malfettos before the Inquisition Axis can. However, when
the Daggers discover Adelina, they find somebody with powers unlike what they have
encountered before.

Adelina needs to trust Enzo is her ally, and that Teren is the genuine foe. Yet, the
existences of these three will crash startlingly, as each battles a different and individual
fight. In any case, one thing they are on the whole certain: Adelina has capacities that
shouldn't have a place in this world. She is consumed by the wrathful darkness in her
heart. Also, a craving to annihilate all who try to oppose her.
 Body
View of Life

To begin, the Young Elites presented a view of life that examines whether
the end justifies the means and how the people around us influence our actions.
The story is primarily told through the eyes of Adelina Amouteru, the daughter of
a wealthy merchant and a malfetto. Despite her lavish upbringing, she is
reduced to live on the run to avoid capture from the Inquisition Axis. As she
meets the Dagger Society, she proceeds to aid them in the downfall of the
current ruler of their government. While she did murder her father beforehand,
she sees this action as unjust despite her hatred for him. She entered the Dagger
Society with the belief that her actions should be reasonable to justify her goals.
As she is taught by the Dagger Society, her views on the world are swayed and
will set her path into becoming the antagonist of her own story. Her primary
mentors had persuaded Adelina into believing that the end justifies the means.
She chooses to use her powers in a way that manipulates the minds of her foes
with illusions. She believes that to attain her goals, she must return the suffering
she endured tenfold to the people that opposed her. With this view of the world,
she no longer feels any remorse for the people she steals from, lies to, and
murders.

While Adelina is the main character, one can say that she wasn’t the only
person that failed to see their morally incorrect actions. We have Teren Santoro
who is the head of the Inquisition Axis and was later revealed to be another
malfetto. Due to the propaganda of fear of the Kennetran government and his
own experiences, he strongly believes that the world they live in would become
greater if the malfettos were to be purged. He doesn’t attempt to see that the
powers of the malfettos are a hindrance to themselves, as opposed to the
people around them. This leads him and the Inquisition Axis to hold public trials
and burnings to communicate that malfettos are the bane of their existence.

Nature of Good and Evil

Moving on, the nature of good and evil within the story is quite a complex matter.
In human beings, 'good' and 'evil' are fluid. People can be a combination of 'good' and
'bad' qualities. And these characteristics could also be mirrored in events, it could be
triggered and could result in inhuman acts. The characters in the novel do conceive
good and evil characteristics. Adelina, the protagonist, has a father who resents her for
bringing him shame by being a malfetto, or “marked” plague survivor. Then, Adelina
overhears her father agreeing to sell Adelina to a strange man as his mistress. In her
anger, somehow, she calls forth phantoms from the earth that move toward her father
projecting her deepest dark desires. The phantoms startle her father and he is
accidentally killed. Later, she expresses the regret of murder but justifies her actions by
the abuse she suffered.

Enzo and Raffaele are another example of the fluidity of what is considered
good and evil. Both men are a part of the Dagger Society that seeks to reach the
malfettos and assist them; an act of goodwill. On the other hand, they believe that
murder, for the sake of their ideals, is justified. This occurrence further influenced Adelina
and how she responds to events, as she was a former member of the group.
Furthermore, we have the example of Adeline herself. Adelina is desperate to retrieve
her sister Violetta from Teren, so she chose to do an act of evil, and betrayed the
Dagger Society, the people who saved her. She has no choice but to accept, she then
agrees to be a spy for Teren in compensation for the life and safety of her little sister.

These sample situations from the novel show the nature of good or evil, and how
the characters perceive their actions. Depending on their personal experiences, a
character may choose to abide by the belief that acts that are questionable in morality
can be done for the expense of their goals.

Moral Statement

Furthermore, a moral statement that continues to reappear is that revenge and

power are the motivations for our actions. The story doesn’t state this outright but rather
is implied through the actions of the characters. As Adelina narrates, she guards herself
by questioning the intentions of the people around her. She comes to realize that even
the people that she considers as allies will use her abilities to attain greater goals. Why
would Violetta, her sister, reach out to her if not to continue the thought that Adelina
will always be the inferior sibling. Why would Raffaele teach her about her emotions, if
not to use this as leverage in Adelina’s decisions. The book paints the characters to
have a greed for power and revenge. This is the reason why the Dagger Society
pledges “to strike fear into the hearts of those who rule Kennetra.” This is also the reason
why the revelation that the powers of malfettos were detrimental to their health and
should be removed was shocking. With the loss of their unnatural powers, the malfettos
will lose their power to oppose and carry out their goals. It was observed that some
malfettos would rather take the loss of their sanity than the loss of the powers the blood
fever left them with.

Moral Issue

The focal topic of The Young Elites is the adage of 'to be feared is to attain
power'. It is shown on a wide range of levels and suggested by plenty of the novel's key
characters. The clearest illustration of 'fear is equal to power' is Adelina's forces. Her
ability to undermine reality, to make hallucinations, is filled by the fear and hate of the
climate she's in. There is an immediate relationship between her solidarity, and the fear
of others. Besides fear being the fuel of her capacities, Adelina as an individual
concedes that she felt ground-breaking despite different people groups fear and
powerlessness. This admission is one explanation she battles with her inner nature.
Different characters call attention to Adelina her craving for dread and disdain. Bright
blames her for getting a kick out of the chance to be incited during their saving match,
and Enzo says to her during their instructional course that he realizes she wants fear.

Another prime example is how the Kenettran government directs their people to
fear the malfettos, and use this fear to stay in power. While similar to Adelina, the
difference between her and the Kenettran government is that they utilized that fear on
an institutional level. At the point when Teren tends to the group at Adelina's burning,
he paints the Young Elites as satanic and perilous and declares that the solitary thing
that can ensure 'ordinary' individuals from them is the public authority. He is utilizing
individuals' fear to control them into visually impaired, unchallenged confidence in the
government, subsequently giving the government more force. Besides, the Kenettran
lord empowers gossipy tidbits that malfettos are misfortune so he can blame them for
his helpless principle and the sorry condition of the country. By playing off of the
average citizens' apprehensions the ruler can keep up his force as a ruler.

Author’s Philosophy

We believe that the author’s conception of good and evil is that an outcome should not
excuse any wrongs made to attain it. Composing a villain was harder than Marie Lu suspected it
would have been. From the point of view of a hero, the author had originally planned The
Young Elites series but realized that the villain story would have been far more compelling. In an
arrangement including a program of assorted, super-fueled teenagers, Adelina's way to
murkiness is the most interesting as she battles to control her forces and stand up for herself in a
world often cruel to women like her. While our protagonist achieves most of her goals, the author
seems to punish Adelina’s belief that the end justifies the means since it is also the actions that
were aligned in this belief that led to her being distraught. Adelina sought out to reveal the
extent of her powers and achieve her revenge, but the author made it so that it was at the cost
of her morality, sanity, and her ability to discern reality from illusions. The author made it clear
that we should be able to perform acts of good morals to attain an outcome, lest we face the
double-edged sword that goals achieved with wrongs can become. All things considered, the
author seeks to influence her readers positively by reaffirming the need to consider the morality
of our actions.

Conclusion
To sum up, Marie Lu’s work ‘The Young Elites’ presents a view of life that examines
whether the end justifies the means and how the people around us influence our
actions. We also see characters internally and externally grapple between what is right
and what is wrong. Perhaps the main theme of The Young Elites is the principle that fear
is power. It is manifested at several different levels and referred to by a plethora of the
main characters of the novel. Adelina's powers are the clearest example of "fear is
power." The fear and hatred of the world in which she is fuelled by her ability to subvert
reality, to construct illusions. A strong connection exists between her dominance and
the fear of others. The Young Elites is a commendable novel that managed to
challenge the morality of its readers. First, an admirable trait of the novel was that it
narrated the story in the eyes of the person with fluid morals, switching from good and
evil. It allowed the readers to examine how such a person can be influenced, their
process of thought, and the result of the actions. Second, it managed to encompass
multiple social issues. It communicated that people of power, governments or influential
groups, can use fear to manipulate, and control people. Also, it tackled the
discrimination between two groups of people: the malfettos, and the people
unscathed from the blood fever. While it was observed implicitly, we can deduce that
even the author believes in the need for equality. Third, the story did not seek to glorify
its villains, but rather condemn them to the consequences of their mistakes. In terms of
weaknesses, we would like to recommend that the story be told in the perspective of
the people as well. This isn't to discredit the narration of the main characters, but rather
we would like to see the perspective of the majority towards the morally right and
wrong actions of the characters. All things considered, the Young Elites is an impressive
novel and we recommend this to people who have interests in fiction, fantasy, morals,
social issues, and romance.
 Sources
● Grade Saver. (n.d.) Biography of Marie Lu.
Retrieved from https://www.gradesaver.com/author/marie-lu
● Penguin Random House. (n.d.) Marie Lu.
Retrieved from
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/223095/marie-lu/
● Calloway Books. (2015, January 4.) Review: The Young Elites by Marie Lu.
Retrieved from https://callowaybooks.wordpress.com/2015/01/04/review-
the-young-elites-by-marie-lu/
● Barnes and Nobles. (n.d.) The Young Elites (The Young Elites Series #1).
Retrieved from https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-young-elites-marie-
lu/1118663092