Divergent

At 16 you have to choose between staying with your family, friends and everyone you grew up with and leaving them all behind, never to see them again.  That is the premise for Divergent by Veronica Roth.  Beatrice “Tris” Prior is a 16 year old girl growing up in dystopian Chicago where the population is divided into 5 factions. Each faction is centered on 1 ideal – Amity (Peaceful), Candor (Honesty), Abnegation (Selfishness), Erudite (Intelligence) and Dauntless (Bravery).    Tris has grown up in Abnegation but has always felt she never belonged. In her 16^th year she has to choose to stay in Abnegation for the rest of her life or choose another faction and never see her family again.  She makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.  The book revolves around Tris, her decision and the consequences both good and bad. 

Roth creates a beautiful picture of a dystopian Chicago.  At first Chicago is a separate but equal place to live with each faction living together but separate and finding peace in that arrangement. As the reader gets more into the book, Tris’ eyes start opening to everything that is around her and so do the readers.  Not everything is as it seems and Roth makes that transition seamless; makes the reader not realize the transition has been made.  I know I am being very vague but I don’t want to give too much away. 

The character of Tris is very complex; not just because she is 16 but because she starts to challenge everything she was brought up to believe at a young age.  Nothing is as she believes and she becomes curious which is not an Abnegation trait, it is an Erudite trait.  She learns things about herself that scare her and everyone else around her.   She also finds a release and thrill in the things that scare her, a Dauntless trait.  She learns that the thing you fear the most can be the thing that makes you the happiest.  When she chooses factions (and by now I am sure you have figured that she choose a different faction than Abnegation), her initiation into that faction is harsh and cruel but she finds herself happy and relaxed (most of the time).  Her instructor Four is a big part of her finding out who she is and her understanding that the things she fears the most are the things that make you the happiest.  In Abnegation, giving into your feelings and being selfish is not something you did. 

When she switches factions, she begins to realize that in Abnegation, everyone made the rest of the world seem great and that everything was going smoothly. When she goes to her new faction, she finds out that is not the case and there is a lot of unrest within the other factions – an unrest that could cause an uprising. But that is later.

With all of the dystopian, science fiction novels out there I find it hard not to compare Tris to Katniss (Hunger Games) and Bella (Twilight).  She has qualities of both characters – with Bella, Tris is young, impressionable. But that is where the comparison stops. She is much more like Katniss but with feelings.  Katniss never let herself feel anything, to herself or anyone else. Tris wears her emotions on her sleeve and people see them.  But with that, she is becoming stronger than Katniss. She is learning from her emotions and becoming stronger because of them. Tris does not close herself off to other people as easily as Katniss does.  In a nutshell, Tris is Katniss who let’s someone love her and let’s herself love someone else.  She has a family who cares for her, loves her and would do anything for her. And throughout Divergent she makes friends who care for her, love her and would do anything for her. That is something that Katniss didn’t have the luxury of having. 

This book is amazing.  It challenges the reader to think which faction they thing they are in, which one they would choose and why. The readers look inward to learn something new about themselves.   It makes them ask would you stay where you are because of your family or are you strong enough to be yourself and let them go.   I would leave my faction; not because I want to defy my family and friends but to see other parts of the city and how other people are brought up, what beliefs they have and how they live.  For me, I like to think I am like Tris – I have a little of each faction in me and that is what makes us all human and interesting.