We All Looked Up (a follow up)

Since I wrote the review for We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach, I’ve thought about all of the things I wanted to say about the book but didn’t for some reason (I was pretty tired when I wrote it). There’s a quote in the book that basically says that when the news of the asteroid (named Ardor) hits everyone (pun not intended), the leaders of the world completely flip, which is true. Before the news of Ardor, the leaders of the world were politicians, the police, the government, people with money, all the people you would see in power today. But when the news comes that Earth might be hit, thugs and gangs come into power in towns and cities, completely overruling the police. Writing this part also made me think about how much the two groups of power have in common, but that’s a conversation for a different time. Tommy Wallach has a spot on portrayal of society in this book because all of the things happening in the book are just a slightly more extreme version of what I’ve seen on the news and heard on social media. When something happens that people feel they have no power over, they give themselves power over something else. In We All Looked Up, that something for many people was controlling the streets, but for the main characters, and I’m sure many others, that something was finally taking control their life. This was an amazing portrayal of society because it shows what people would do in real life so well, almost down to a T. Right now, some people are lashing out against people of power to feel like they have control over what happens to them, some people are speaking out against racial injustice to feel like they have control over what happens to themselves and others. When people are scared they will do almost anything to protect themselves and the ones they care about, and that is vividly shown in We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach.