Reviews JustForFun / The Ugly Barnacle

Too many people miss the point

It's astounding how many readers complain that this story "doesn't help at all", and in the process reveal their ignorance. This controversial narrative has been criticized for not delivering a message it was clearly never supposed to have in the first place.

Of course "The Ugly Barnacle" doesn't help. It shouldn't, at least not in the way its sheltered critics want it to, because it reveals a harsh truth about how things work. Our wishy-washy, feel-good society has programmed us to believe, from birth, that it's what's on the inside that counts, that physical attractiveness doesn't and shouldn't matter in any capacity.

But the fact of the matter (as TUB teaches us) is that being physically unattractive does matter to others. In fact, it matters so much that everyone else on the planet may spontaneously drop dead because an individual is simply too ugly.

TUB's moral is a tough lesson to learn, and it isn't hard to understand why so many people reject it and choose to live in a fantasy realm. But TUB is a tale that nevertheless pulls no punches in revealing the reality of the world we live in, and it's all the better for it.