In this distopian future, the city -- really, the world, from the perspective of the novel -- stands divided into five factions, each with its own view on how to approach the world. Amity wants peace, and thus their people face the world with a calm, cheerful manner at all times. Erudite seeks knowledge, the home of scientists and researchers. Candor values honesty above all else, creating transparent if sometimes blunt people. Dauntless values bravery and courage above all else, leading its people toward risks and adrenaline rushes. And Abnegation, the starting home of Tris Prior, displays selflessness, caring for the poor and the politics and putting their own lives last.
These factions generally do not interact; children choose their faction at 16 based on an aptitude test, sometimes staying in their original places, sometimes leaving their entire lives behind. These aptitude tests show one result, meant to make choosing an easy decision. After they pass through initiation into their chosen factions, there might be some basic interaction of the groups, but overall one associates with their faction and none else. There is one other group, the factionless, who remain on the edges of society like untouchables. No one sees them, no one interacts with them -- other than Abnegation, who often care for them out of their desire to help others. These groups create solid dividing lines in society, lines are aren't challenged or changed, or even questioned, for countless generations before Tris Prior shows up.
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| The symbols of the five factions |
Tris's experiences through Dauntless initiation comprise the majority of the book. She struggles -- she is slim and short and not dangerous-looking in the slightest -- and her growth and improvement into a competent, brave fighter is slow. And if you don't come out on top during initiation, you fail, thrown out into the wilderness beyond the factions to become one of the factionless, the untouchables. So her situation has an element of desperation to it, a desperation compounded by her own desires to prove herself, to become something beyond her selfless roots.
As I read this book, my thoughts almost automatically went to The Hunger Games, and I'm sorry if that's too obvious.
There are many deep similarities to these two series, but ultimately they play out in different ways, especially in the first book. Both novels have similar protagonists: teen girls who are tough, who aren't quite sure what to do with their emotions, who don't quite know their places in the world. Both novels have a similar series arc: a distopian future, the ultimate overthrow of the system, the ideas of oppression (though not necessarily from the same sources. Both novels focus on similar growth: protagonists finding strength in themselves, their hesitations with love, the absolutely fearless ideals they eventually subscribe to. And of course neither novel offers the full background necessary to understanding the current societal situation, though both offer enough clues that the reader can piece together what's going on outside the main character's life.
But I find this situation, in Divergent, more understandable, more possible, and more in line what that I observe and understand in human nature.
Plus, I like Tris better.
Katniss, the lead character of The Hunger Games trilogy (for those who have been living in a total absence of current pop culture -- for which I would not blame you in the slightest), is a wholly good person. I'm sure her potential as a role model accounts for at least a small amount of her incredible popularity. She's worked for much of her life to support her family, sacrificing long hours and any semblance of a social life to take care of her mother and sister. Katniss is definitely pissed about her lot in life -- a dead father, scraping together food to survive, a distant mother who struggles to care for her children -- but she also recognizes what she had to give up and why she had to do it. While I enjoy the Hunger Games trilogy immensely, something about Katniss's perspective has always slightly annoyed me. Just slightly. Maybe because, while I might admire her steadfast devotion to her family, I find that, to me, people who are always good, people who always choose the right things regardless of circumstances, are not always fun to be around. I suspect that this is simply because I am not inherently a good person, at least not in a selfless way, and so those types force me to acknowledge the weaknesses in my own character (something no one likes to do). Don't get me wrong: I try to be a good person, and I believe that I succeed reasonably well. And I really like this series and I do like Katniss; she's just not the most relate-able, realistic character for me.
Tris though is more real to me, probably because she's more like me and so her growth and changes can reflect what I may have wanted in another life (one where I was much more bad-ass, I should add).
Tris isn't sure of her place in the world; she finds herself wanting in regards to what those around her expect, and she wants a more exciting life than the one she currently has. That is a position I have found myself in, especially the idea of a life beyond my current one. And like Tris, I have learned how to make choices to move myself toward that life instead of living in slightly uncomfortable complacency.
In her growth, Tris finds a place inside herself where she is strong, where she can face her fears, where she can acknowledge the cruelty she sometimes finds there and where, interestingly enough, that cruelty can have a place. She's not an overall cruel character; rather, she's a tough character, and as the novel ends she is starting to find the balance between that cruel edge within herself, the bravery she's learned as part of Dauntless (as she inevitably chooses), and the selflessness she was originally taught as part of Abnegation. After all, people who can be truly brave often have to be just the slightest bit cruel in order to do what is necessary.
In a way, Tris is more of a role model type of character for me, especially in her continuing growth in Divergent. I've never been one to have heroes like celebrities or athletes or entrepreneurs, but I do have an admiration for people and characters who are at peace with the multiple parts of themselves. That peace is an incredibly hard thing to accomplish, something that I don't think a lot of people, myself included, can claim. Tris certainly doesn't start here -- she must fight her way toward that kind of acceptance and peace -- but her movement toward that ideal is, to me, a much more realistic path that many walk.
I am not sure how this story will translate into a movie, just as I was unsure about the Hunger Games. Frankly, I hated the first Hunger Games movie and still now have not seen the second one. I disliked the crazy camera motion in order to keep the rating PG-13 instead of R (as the violence of the actual novel would necessitate), and I found the loss of the internal dialogue of Katniss's experiences made the movie feel empty. Since Divergent is also told from that first person perspective, I am concerned about seeing the movie. Tris's internal life is rich with her ideas, her struggles, her changing world and life. If that gets cut and left behind, that will change the story. So while I think the events of the novel would translate well, I'm not sure if the character will.
I'm also interested, from a more personal perspective, to see Tris's influence over pop culture. The Hunger Games had such an incredibly teen following, and huge marketability, that immediately resulted in shirts and souvenirs and little mockingjay pins everywhere. Divergent, and really the faction Dauntless within Divergent, is all about adventures and risk taking. Their people, and Tris included, love tattoos and fighting and crazy adrenaline rushes, and those things tend to be frowned upon by the parents of many teens. Some of Dauntless's ideals, such as facing your fears and deal with life's problems with courage, should be commended, and hopefully those will overshadow some of the more 'negative' things. But I'm curious to see how the elements like the tattoos play out, especially if the movies attract the same audiences as The Hunger Games. I'll be on the lookout for Divergent-themed tattoos in the coming year or two.
Thus ends my thoughts on Divergent.
Now, I want to think about its sequels: Insurgent and Allegiant.
I was not nearly as fond of these two sequels as I was of the first novel.
Less depth exists in these two novels combined than in the first. The overarching themes -- those about cooperation and the division of people along semi-arbitrary lines -- certainly carry value, but those themes are overshadowed by the sad states of the stories themselves.
Insurgent, as valiantly named as it is, does little beyond fulfilling the necessary, predictable plot lines left at the end of Divergent, which ends on what I can only describe as a brilliant note. The whole novel focuses so much on Tris's initiation into Dauntless and so little on the strife between the factions themselves that the ending twist -- that of Erudite using Dauntless as mind-controlled zombies to take down Abnegation -- comes as a complete surprise. I'm usually pretty good at predicting endings, but this one blindsided me.
However, its eventual result in Insurgent was totally predictable, taking the series in a direction I was not happy with.
Just my opinion, of course :)
They are both big books, and so I'm going to summarize; in summarizing, I must simplify the plots a bit. Events in the novel are more complicated when they are spread out over 400 pages, but sadly complications don't necessarily equate to complexity, and this story sags.
The basic gist of Insurgent is this: after Erudite uses the Dauntless to effectively wipe out Abnegation, there's a lot of turmoil amongst the factions, specifically over who should get involved and on which side. While that turmoil distracts everyone, the factionless rise up and eventually take over Erudite. Their aim is to eliminate factions entirely -- to destroy the system they were cut out of for so long. And... that's basically the entire book. Sure, there's a lot of smaller drama, and I've skipped over a few major moments in favor of keeping some mystery alive, but there's almost no depth to the story and very little character growth. Instead, there are a lot of plot "loops" that are mildly interesting but serve no real purpose -- such as when Tris tries to sacrifice herself to end a mind-control threat from Erudite. She turns herself in to Jeanine Mathews, the villain from the first novel, and after some experimentation and the like, Erudite decides to kill her. Her friends from Dauntless and Abnegation break her out at the last moment, and she ends up back exactly where she started before she turned herself in. There's no progress, and instead the incident serves to create useless conflict between Tris and her brother, Caleb. And without progress in a story, getting through the final book in the trilogy proved to be quite a feat.
At the very end of Insurgent, Tris, Tobias/Four, and the rest of their group manage to escape the city and head out into the world beyond their own. They are soon picked up by the people outside the city -- thanks to the constant hinting, the reader knew there was someone out there, even if no one has any idea who that might be. They abandon the city and the factions and factionless, most clearly in an attempt to move beyond their conflicts but also in a "seek and ye shall find" kind of search for answers about their history.
There is where the final book, Allegiant, picks up.
Allegiant opens with such a sudden change in style that I want to warn readers off once again:
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| I'm going to ruin the ending of the series here. Seriously, don't read on if you don't want to know. |
I can't really say I was surprised; as the story progresses, Tris becomes ever more self-righteous, and in distopia stories, that often leads to death (usually through some form of self-sacrifice). In doing so, I find her more grating; as she becomes less a person and more a paragon of doing the right thing, she becomes less admirable and more unrealistic.
Tobias's perspective gives the final novel of this trilogy a little more depth, especially given he and Tris's growing relationship. However, it's often hard to tell who is talking; they're living in the same areas, dealing with the same enemies and conflicts, so not much of the story really differs no matter who you are reading. Some subplots, like Tobias's involvement in a radical underground group, do add more to one perspective over another, but the switching still gets confusing.
The plot of the final book revolves around a discrimination story: those who are genetically perfect, the Divergent of the factions, and those who are genetically damaged, a leftover of the wars of previous generations. Those previous generations, at it turns out, include us -- America, and much of the world, descended into war and eventually took to genetic modification in an attempt to fix things and continue valued traits. When things continued to get worse, and with a rapidly dwindling population, the government decided to test out different living situations to heal those who are genetically 'damaged.' One of these situations is that of the factions in Tris's city.
Out in the real world, the government basically monitors those in the cities, but those who are genetically damaged are considered inferior to those who are genetically perfect. The damaged are also blamed for society's past problems -- their deficiencies caused the wars and violence and pretty much any other social problem out there. So now, they can only hold the crappy jobs, and they are routinely and casually discriminated against. This includes the facility where Tris and Tobias end up.
Once there, and once the truth is revealed, Tris spearheads the movement to accept those who are damaged, in the face of the genetically perfect people who have rescued them and run the facility. That's the central conflict, but with lots of little tendrils of plot branching off.
This basic idea works pretty well as a foundation; it's a discrimination story, about judging people for who they are on the inside and not for things they can't control. While I find it a little too heavy-handed, it does make sense as a young adult theme (don't forget that Tris is only 16, and Tobias 18). I suspect that my seniors, who are pretty well educated people by this point, would probably pick up at it at least, but they may not dislike it the way I do. The themes certainly can seem universal, seem poignant, but it's such an overdone concept to me that I'm not interested anymore. No one is trying to convince me we all need to live in harmony and treat each other fairly; I already wholeheartedly believe that.
I know that discrimination is still such an issue. Even today, problems based in discrimination -- like gay rights -- still arise, and I know that they need to be dealt with. But it just seems silly to still be arguing about; people understand that discrimination is wrong, even when they still do and believe in it. No matter what, the dislike and mistrust of difference is essential to the human condition, and so it will never disappear even when everyone does agree it's wrong.
Ultimately, I'm just sick of having this message shoved in my face, especially from a novel that I did not particularly enjoy. Frankly, George Takei makes the same point in much more clever ways on a near-daily basis on Facebook, and that hits home just as well.
I do love talking to my students about books, which is one reason I love teaching seniors: They're learning how to think right about now. They have ideas and opinions and it's so neat to discuss those things with them when something, like this series, really gets under their skin. One student in particular always has great insights into novels, and I always love discussing books with her. She mentioned that, in a future with a minimal population and lots of trouble with basic survival, the idea of the government dividing people into independent cities with no knowledge of each other seems pretty unrealistic. I hadn't thought about it in that way, but she does have a good point, and that's just some of what rubs my wrong about the end of this series.
Overall, the later two novels simply don't carry out the promise of the first. The uniqueness and abilities in Divergent did not continue into Insurgent and Allegiant. It's not that I hated the trilogy; I was just disappointed by it.
As I reflect back on the entire series -- ignoring how bored I was by Insurgent, abandoning my struggle with the teenage-driven themes of Allegiant, trying to focus on how much I loved Divergent -- I have to think of a classic quote from Abraham Lincoln: "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
This is one of my favorite quotes. I don't think about it often, mostly just on election night or when something really stupid happens and both political parties jump to lay blame. But these novels bring it back to the surface. When people separate themselves, however meaningfully or arbitrarily, everyone suffers. The inherent necessity of cooperation allows for survival, perhaps the most mature theme to come out of this series. Four/Tobias tries to remind Tris of this occasionally throughout the series, but the message is more prominent in the first book. And no matter how I feel about them all, it does ring true. When we refuse to acknowledge the value that others bring to the table, we are all lost.
As a final thought: I'm sorry this post took me so long to publish. I've got another in the works from a book I read back in February, and then I should be updating regularly again when the school year ends in a few weeks. Thanks for your patience; maybe go read just Divergent in the meantime. :)
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