The book “Cinder” takes place in new Beijing. Cinder is an adopted cyborg and lives with her mother Adri, and two sisters Peony and Pearl. There are many challenges that Cinder has to face while living as a cyborg in a modern and advanced city. I wholeheartedly believe that Cinder being a cyborg is more harmful than positive to her life.  

To begin, Cinder’s family doesn’t like her and treats her differently because she is a cyborg. One example of this is when Adri, her mother, decides to send her to the cyborg letumosis testing center. The cyborg letumosis testing center is where they infect cyborgs with letumosis and test out different cures on them. They believe that cyborgs aren’t as important as humans and if a cyborg dies, it won’t matter as much as if a human dies. Most of the cyborgs end up dead, as most of the time the cures for the letumosis don’t end up working, and the cyborgs end up dying with the disease along with the other infected humans. Adri says “I never wanted you” and “Take her away. She is yours” both implying that she doesn’t care about Cinder and about what happens to her. Another example of this is when Adri and Pearl are constantly making rude comments to Cinder, purposely trying to bash her down. We see this when Adri says “Perhaps I will have to sell both of you off as spare parts.” and when Pearl says “You can’t be serious! Her? Go with us?” Both of these quotes show us that Cinder isn’t treated very well at home, and Pearl nor Adri would want to be seen with Cinder outside of the house.

Secondly, Cinder has super low self-esteem because she is a cyborg, and has been brought up knowing that being a cyborg is not as good as being human or “normal”. We see this when Prince Kai refuses to give up on getting Cinder to go to the ball with him and asks Cinder again. Cinder still refuses to go to the ball with him, because she doesn’t believe that she is what he wants. She thinks she is not good enough for him, and that declining his offer is benefiting him as well because there couldn’t possibly be a reason for him to want her. We see this when we read two of Cinder’s thoughts: “Cyborg. Lunar. Mechanic. She was the last thing he wanted” and “She was a cyborg, and she would never go to the ball.”  This quote shows us, that since Cinder is different, she thinks she isn’t as good as any normal girl. She thinks that no one would ever want a cyborg as a date to the ball.

Finally, Cinder doesn’t fit in with other town members and isn’t accepted by them. This is shown with the encounter with Sunto and Chang Sacha in the market. When Cinder is at work in her mechanic booth in the market, Cinder has an encounter with Chang Sacha and her kid Sunto. We see this with the quote “Sunto come here! I told you not to play too close to- Sacha met Cinder’s gaze, knotted her lips, and grabbed her son by the arm and spun away.” Also the quote “It’s not like wires are contagious,” Cinder mutters to her empty booth.” These two quotes tell us that it’s not only Cinder’s family who thinks Cinder is bad because she is a cyborg, there are many other people, most people in New Beijing in fact, who think less of cyborgs.

Some people think her being cyborg is good because she has many features such as a built-in lie detector. These supposedly “protect” her from things that she may experience while living in the abnormal life of a robot. Although this may be true, throughout the book, Cinder often complains about wishing she was living a normal life as a teenage girl. What Cinder may not realize is that other human girls don’t have these special features. By having these added aspects to her mind, it just sets her even more apart from the average female human. If she had the ability to pretend she was just a normal girl, that wouldn’t even be possible, due to the fact that not only is her body different to a human body, but her mind is as well. In conclusion, although there may be a few reasons why Cinder being cyborg benefits her life, I believe that there are many more reasons why it is harmful to her.