In the novel Divergent, it tells about a dystopian society and how they separate each other into five factions, the factionless, and a wall. These five factions all have different role and a different way of life. Dauntless are the brave and fearless, Abnegation is selfless, Candor is the honest, Erudite is smart, and Amity is the nature lover. They all have their own roles and way of life but if you are not careful you could end up as a factionless. They live on the street and live off of what Abnegation gives them. These five, plus one, factions are all different but even though they are nothing alike their work and their personalities shape their community into what it is, and to them it is perfect. Even though they think it’s perfect it’s not, nothing about it is a society that we, as readers, would think is anything but perfect. A society that throws people on the street when they do something wrong is anything but perfect and that is why it is hard to call their community a dystopian. They also have a government that tells these factions what they can and can’t do even though the factions have main leaders and a board of main leaders that decides decisions. Beatrice named herself Tris and readers say she says it to be “different” and to leave her past behind and start a new future. (grade saver) You read how Beatrice, the protagonist, and her family are all different and you read how the people in her faction treat each other and the way they interact with the other factions. The novel Divergent teaches about a dystopian society and how it separates normal life and a life that is controlled by a governmental figurehead.
In the novel, the government tells everyone how they think their society should be, and so these people have been following these rules for so long that they don’t know what a real community or society looks like or is. The government has told them what they can and can’t do, they prohibit them from going outside the wall, and they have separated them into these five factions so they have no clue how different they really are. The government has created the perfect picture and when these outcasts called the divergent cannot be controlled they are outraged because they have no control over them, and they kill them. Some readers would question whether you would kill someone just because they don’t fit in with everyone else. This is where the dystopian look comes into place because here is this perfect outlook of their community and then there are these people who play by their own rules and don’t act how the government wants them to. The teens are considered traitors if they choose another faction, their families won’t come to see them, and they are not allowed to go back to their homes. Shoppers say, “The tagline for this book is, “One choice can transform you,” so it’s not like we are reaching here. In Divergent, the choice of faction is the most important choice that a person can make, or at least that what they believe.” (shmoop) Where they are after their choice is their home forever and they are forced to do as their leader(s) says. Abnegation isn’t allowed to think or do anything for themselves, Candor can’t lie even if it could kill someone, Erudite is forced to study all these unnecessary things that will have no effect on theirs or anyone else’s life, Amity can’t use technology because they are forced to use all things nature, and dauntless can’t show fear even when their life depended on it. Tris and her friends are initiates after they took their blood and put it into the fire of coals. They have initiation and their rankings decided whether they stay or become factionless. They do not get to go back to their original faction and their families are no longer able to speak or remain in contact with them.
Even though these factions have their own way of things everything they do comes together with the other factions. Their work may have no resemblance but it shapes their homes into what they are and how they are. The dauntless protect around the wall with guns, which is a good and bad thing because they are making sure the people of their homes cannot escape but they are also keeping them from the world outside of the wall that they do not know anything about. The candor makes sure everyone is telling the truth and if anyone or anything is out of place they would know. They find out things like, if someone is planning to go over the wall they can catch them before it happens. Abnegation helps the factionless, delivers supplies, and helps in any way possible to make sure everything is running smoothly and no one is out of a fortune. The Erudite experiment, study, and find all new ways into making their homes better in which they live in. They especially use technology and serums in order to see how much they can take over. Amity uses their nature skills in order to make crops for the food people eat and they also make things like bowls and materials that people need in their everyday lives. Visualize how all of this comes together and it’s like a powerful community and nothing is going to hurt or destroy it. In other ways, these factions can also hurt each other. Some readers may find it a little over-boarding not being able to see their families again because of their decision. They might find it a little much that their families would think of them as traitors because they were picking the faction that best represented them and the rest of their lives and they wouldn’t want them to just do what was best for them and made them happy. Tris says, “I Think of the motto I read in my Faction History textbook: Faction before blood. More than family, our factions are where we belong. Can that possibly be right?” (Roth 42) The readers think that she is trying to say that the faction people are their family now and that they belong there because it’s who they are. These factions have bad sides and good sides. One faction, in particular, is Erudite, which is basically controlled by one woman. She makes all the orders and she is the figurehead of their faction. She’s on the board but somehow still tells everyone on that board what to do. She wants to make an army of Dauntless lead people with syringes and serum that takes over their brains in order to kill the factionless because she thinks there is no use of them since they can’t do anything for anybody not even themselves. She also wants to kill all the Dauntless because she believes that they aren’t like everyone else and thinks that one day they will all come together and try and take over when really it’s what she wants to do and she feels threatened. This army is hurting not only her own faction but everyone else’s as well and it is killing innocent people for no reason once so ever.
Even though this dystopian society is a little rough it is still always for other perfect things like love, which is what Tris and Four found during the invents going on throughout the book. Even though Tris has major conflict she still has to fight for her spot to be in Dauntless and it scares Four that she will get hurt. Readers have said, “Tris must perform well in Dauntless training while keeping her Divergence a secret, a balancing act that leads to conflicts with others, struggles with her identity, and threats to her life.”(SparkNotes) After she was jumped Four couldn’t hold it in anymore and had to protect her from anything, anyone, everything, and everyone. They were very protective of each other but as the Erudite was making its army of Dauntless Tris found out that Four is a divergent as well. They work together by using their abilities to fight the serum and try to overthrow the Erudite leader. They use groups of divergent and other factions to save their families from being hurt. Tris loses both of her parents in the fight to save all these people and even though they are dead they went down in honor and for all the right reasons. Even though Four had been captured earlier on when Tris gets up there he attacks her with another serum they had planted in his neck but because her love is so strong for him and she continued to fight for him she broke it and he overthrew the serum. They are finally able to hurt and capture their leader and turn all the Dauntless back into their original selves. They are able to restore life to its original form even though nothing will be the same from here on out. They are able to over each other unconditionally and forever be together, even though there is a lot more to come.
In the novel Divergent, Roth teaches about the dystopian society and how it separates normal life and a life that is controlled by a governmental figurehead. You also see this in the Hunger Games, when the government is taking two people from every district and making them fight for their lives, and even though they are killing each other everyone else is loving it and thinks this is perfect and it relates to the way the government in Divergent takes over their people and make them into their 5 factions. Through the use of factions, character choice, and love she explains the roles and the characteristics of their dystopian society. She uses their emotions of how they feel towards each other and their population. She also uses the way a government can change and form things into something they or something is not. Roth tells about how even when everything is going smoothly there will always be a disruption by someone or something. In the novel, it creates real-life descriptions that not only could happen in real life but might happen as well. She’s showing that if we as readers don’t be ourselves someone will turn us into something we are not and change the way we as a society behave. Some readers may think this is happening right now in some places because of their one ruler controlling and telling the people how to act. Roth is opening the eyes of people and readers should pay close attention to our surroundings.
Work Cited
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. London, Scholastic Corp, 2008.
“Divergent.” SparkNotes. http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/divergent/. Accessed 1 April 2019.
Gunderson, Kathryn. Mckeever, Christine ed. “Divergent Summary”. Gradsaver, 28 Feburary 2014 Web. 5 April 2019. https://www.gradesaver.com/divergent/study-guide/summary. Accessed 1 April 2019.
Roth, Veronica. Divergent. New York, Katherine Tegen Books, 2011.
Shmoop Editorial Team. 'Divergent Chapter 2 Summary.' Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 5 Apr. 2019. https://www.shmoop.com/divergent/chapter-2-summary.html. Accessed 1 April 2019.