Divergent - Veronica Roth

 

One choice can transform you...

 

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are--and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen.

But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, Tris also learns that her secret might help her save the ones she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

I'm so excited! Why am I excited? I will tell you why! Because Divergent the movie is coming out in less than six months! Now, does that mean I'll get to see it in theatres? Doubtful. But maybe in the cheap theatre. Who knows?

In the meantime, I'm finally writing a review for the novel Divergent, by Veronica Roth, which I actually read over a year ago but recently reread aloud to my roommate. This is one of my favorite novels ever because of the main character, Tris, and her motivating credo. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In the novel Divergent, the city of Chicago has become its own standalone community after a lot of apocalyptic events like World War III or what-have-you. In this city, the people are divided up into five (technically six) factions or clans that take care of different parts of the society:

- Abnegation, the Selfless: these guys are basically like the Amish or the Mennonites. They believe in serving others, in doing charitable works, etc. Their whole thing is selflessness and service. In order to become a member of Abnegation, you do a month of community service. They run the government side of things because everyone wants selfless people in office, right?

- Amity, the Peaceful: this is the faction in charge of farming and whatnot. They're basically hippies. I have no idea what their initiation is. They're generally nice people…but you find out how strict they are about the whole peaceful thing in book two. If you get in a physical confrontation with another person, both you and that person have to talk to a counselor and get put on happy pills. And I think they drug their water with happiness juice.

- Candor, the Honest: this faction is made up of lawyers and law-makers and whatnot, and their whole thing is honesty. It can get a little obnoxious, though, because in Candor you're raised to take that filter between your mouth and your brain and go stick it in a hole somewhere. One of the secondary characters, Christina, is from Candor and she has some trouble adjusting at first to another faction where blabbing is discouraged. Their initiation is to undergo a public truth test where they dope you up and ask really personal questions because there are apparently no secrets in Candor.

- Dauntless, the Brave: the warrior clan of this society, made up of fighters. A majority of the book is Dauntless initiation, which focuses on learning to control and/or confront your fears so they don't cause problems in the field, as well as learning how to fight (but also, Tris learns how to have fun). But, like every club, there's some corruption here. It's actually the worst here and in Erudite, unfortunately.

But I love Dauntless because one of their basic principles, the one Tris loves and believes in, states: we believe in everyday ordinary acts of bravery. That might seem small, but it's not. It's pretty cool, actually. Because to quote another book* I love, "It's more than being brave. It's about good against evil, right against wrong. Of doing what you know to be right even when no one else will help you."

* The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald; this is actually a direct quote from the movie, paraphrased from the book

- Erudite, the Intelligent: or something like that. These are the scientists and researchers. Their main problem (and the biggest issue regarding corruption) is their clinical detachment from human emotions to pursue logic and information. The main bad guy of books one and two is so evil because she wants to figure out how this one group of people work…by torturing, experimenting, and dissecting them, because it's the most convenient way to work.

And the thing I like is, it's not everybody in Erudite who has this problem. And not all the bad guys are from Erudite, either. Some are in Dauntless, one's in Abnegation, and I think there's one in Amity. It would be the easiest thing in the world for Veronica Roth to be like, "Oh, well…see, ALL of Erudite's bad. The end." But she didn’t—which is good, because that would be sloppy writing. Thank you, Ms. Roth, for this lack of sloppy. Happiness abounds in me because I'm tired of slacker writers. Boo. But she's not a slacker, so yay!

- and then there are the factionless. These are the homeless, the mostly-jobless (some of them work as janitors, city bus drivers, etc), those without health care or anything like that. Abnegation tries to take care of them, but Abnegation is fairly small in population compared to the factionless.

Being factionless is considered the worst thing, short of losing everyone you love to death or losing your own life, that could happen to someone in this world, because it's basically a death sentence. Most of the factionless don't live to old or even middle-age unless they're something special (kids who've washed out of Dauntless training, for example).

We actually don't see much of the factionless in Divergent, but we see enough to know that I, personally, would rather live the nun-ish life of an Abnegation woman than live factionless.

So those are the five (six) factions in the world of Divergent. When you turn sixteen, you take an aptitude test to see where you're best suited to go. You don't actually have to follow the results of your test, but the odds of you washing out during initiation and becoming factionless are much, much higher if you're in a faction you're not suited for.

Most kids test highest for one faction—maybe two, if they're weird. But Tris, the main character, is Divergent: she tested into three factions.

Abnegation. Erudite. Dauntless.

A little backstory of the world politics. In the last five to ten years, the leader of Erudite (the scientific sociopath we mentioned earlier) has been slandering the two highest government leaders of the city, who both belong to Abnegation, as well as slandering Abnegation itself, because she wants to be in power. Most of what she's saying actually is NOT true, but that's not the point. Point is, Tris would never join Erudite. She's unhappy in Abnegation, and she wants to learn to be brave and help people by protecting them…so she chooses Dauntless.

And then we, the reader, are launched into the fun, radical, ridiculously high-spirited, reckless, and incredibly dangerous world of Dauntless and its initiation. I gotta say, one of the things I love about reading is experience things I would never do in real life (like swimming with jellyfish or working in a circus or walking on Mars*). Divergent and the segments of Dauntless training and life give me that in spades. I will never go zip-lining, for example, or climb to the top of a Ferris wheel, or jump off a roof or a train, but I can feel the exhilaration and adrenaline of doing those things when I read Divergent.

* "Experiences" I enjoyed while reading Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz, Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck, and A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane.

I'll say it again: thank you, Veronica Roth.

There's more to the plot—such as why Divergents are considered so dangerous to society and Tris has to hide her Divergent status; what's really going on over at Erudite; the secrets of Tris's mother's past—and they're all fantastic, but we're going to leave that alone for now. Just know that they're genius AND I couldn’t call them, not even at the last minute. That is saying something.

Also, Four (the love interest) is hot. Like, for real. I haven’t gotten a good look at the actor who's going to play him, but the way he is in the book, he's hot. And I don't approve of getting tattoos (my personal opinion), but the reason he has tattoos of the five symbols of the five factions is a pretty good one—he wants to be selfless, loving, honest, brave, and smart, the five "virtues" as it were of the five factions. Give the boy some props, he's not just spilling random ink on his body. And Veronica Roth manages to strike the perfect balance between dangerous-bad-boy and vulnerable-scarred-boy and smexy-romantic-boy with Four, as well. His secret identity? Didn’t see that one coming either.

The final thing about this book that really impresses me is how the author cuts through the language to these beautiful, poignant thoughts and ideas…but the language is actually very, very simple. It reads like someone talking. It doesn't read like a book, which actually makes it a pretty fast read, because it feels like Tris is actually talking to me about what's going on. That's a pretty good trick.

So I now own Divergent and Insurgent and hope to get book three, Allegiant, for Christmas. Hopefully it's as brilliant as Divergent, without some of the minor flaws of Insurgent (only real flaw in book two: Four briefly turns into a moron and makes me want to slap him; Tris's reaction to his moronicity makes me want to smack her, but she has more of an excuse—she's sixteen). I loved Insurgent, don't get me wrong, but it's not the 5-star book Divergent is. Hopefully Allegiant is a 5-star, too.

And after that? The movie! Ex-CITE-ment!

- LA Knight