Divergent
By: Veronica Roth
Main Character
The main character of this novel is Beatrice Prior. Later in the book, she will change her name to Tris, and she will also be addressed by a nickname she despises: Stiff. Tris grows up in a futuristic society of modern-day Chicago, Illinois. She has never left the Chicago area; therefore, she doesn’t know anything outside of her everyday life. Tris grows up in a society dependent upon five social factions for existence; Abnegation; the selfless individuals, Amity; the peaceful society, Erudite; the intelligent persons, Candor; the honest individuals and Dauntless; the braver people within the social society of Chicago. Tris’s family is in the Abnegation faction, unfortunately, she doesn’t value or feel like she is selfless. Therefore, she has always wanted a change, the availability to try new experiences. Her faction, Abnegation, is so selfless that their population only wears gray clothing, lives in basic gray homes, never wastes, uses practically no electricity, provides care and help for the homeless and only owns basic necessities for human survival. Her social class doesn’t even believe in owning a mirror; admiring one’s self-image is considered selfish. Nevertheless, she has a loving family. Her parents both work for the government, and her twin brother is both intelligent and incredibly selfless. After Tris and her brother turn 16, they are required to take an aptitude test. The results of the test will determine what social group either would be more prepared for success.
Unfortunately, the test for Tris results as inclusive: she adheres to the characteristics of three different social groups: Abnegation, Dauntless and Erudite. Her test results illustrate that she is a Divergent: she adheres to more than one faction equally. Tris chooses to live in Dauntless, and after succeeding in her initiation, she will join the brave protectors of the city: Dauntless are essentially what our society would call police officers. During her training for Dauntless, she learns that Divergent individuals are not affected by any serum given to other persons in the society. She develops a friendship with her mentor, Tobias Eaton, but he calls himself Four. Tris eventually learns that he too is a Divergent. He warms Tris that the Dauntless are going to be ordered somehow to kill the Abnegation society. Every person from Dauntless is inserted with what they believe to be a tracking device, but it is actually a serum designed to infiltrate the mind. This serum is given as a way to eliminate the Abnegation faction from the hands of the Dauntless society. Of course the serum doesn’t work on Tris, or Four, and with the help of their families, they reverse the serums, preventing the Dauntless from killing the innocent Abnegation. Although Tris begins the book as a lost person looking to find a way in life, she is the unresolved hero at the novel’s conclusion. She learns a great deal about herself, her family, her society’s past, friendship and love during the novel.
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As mentioned previously, the book takes place in a futuristic society in modern-day Chicago. The city is surrounded by a large fence, and no living civilian has traveled beyond the limits of the fence. All of society believes the fence is to prevent enemies or wars from occurring: a large war apparently happened before the book began. The majority of the book also takes place in the Dauntless Headquarters: The Chasm. It’s a large cave with rooms for sleeping, physical training, simulators for mental training and a hall for eating. It’s described as a cold, dark, dreary location.
Throughout the novel, Tris learns a great deal of information about herself. She feels different, and always left out from her family. When she learns of being a Divergent, she only chooses to live in the Dauntless Society because she thinks her chances of being discovered are far less, and she admires their bravery and independence. Tris works incredibly hard, and she refuses to quit. She learns how to channel her hardworking ethic and mental abilities during the novel. She also learns to trust other persons: especially Four. More than anything, Tris ends the novel as a hero, and when the book began, she didn’t appear as another face in the crowd, but instead, the face of mockery. She proved that any individual can not only rise to the occasion, but save the day during a crisis.
Summary
As mentioned previously, Divergent takes place in a futuristic society of modern-day Chicago, Illinois. The city has five different social classes, or as the novel calls them: factions. Each faction listed previously, has assigned career fields. Abnegation are government employees, Erudite are educators, Candor are lawyers, Amity are farmers and Dauntless are police officers. The book also mentions functionless persons: the individuals who are both homeless and do not fit into a single faction or were kicked out of their faction. Also, the Divergent individuals are equally equipped to succeed in more than one faction: Tris Prior could equally succeed in Abnegation, Erudite or Dauntless. The Divergent persons are considered a threat to society, and if one is recognized by a government employee, he or she is to be terminated from existence. Therefore, the few Divergent individuals in the book have to remain silent about their availability to succeed in multiple factions.
After both turning 16, Tris and her brother, Caleb, have the option to stay in Abnegation or choose another faction. Caleb gets to choose first, and Tris feels certain he will stay with Abnegation, but he instead changes to Erudite. After full consideration, Tris isn’t surprised: she knew her brother’s hobbies included reading. Tris felt bad for her parents, feeling they had been betrayed by Caleb, along with her choice: Dauntless. Tris and the other Dauntless recruits return to the Dauntless Headquarters for initiation training. The training will consist of three different parts; first, recruits will be challenged physically via knife throwing, gun-firing accuracy and physical fighting; second, the recruits will be given a serum to experience their worst nightmares; third, the recruits will be given a serum which creates the individual’s worst nightmares, but they will need to rely on their physical and mental examinations from the prior training sessions to succeed.
Initially, Tris struggles with the first phase of training. She’s a smaller, petite girl; therefore, she is easily overpowered by male recruits and many females. She refuses to quit, however, and after enlisting help from her mentor, Four, she quietly begins to succeed in her physical training. However, just before the end of the first training session, she is gravely injured, and it appears she will become factionless because she won’t be able to complete her training. The final part of phase one was a game of capture the flag, and Tris reluctantly escapes her hospital bed to partake in the game; she instrumentally leads her team to victory. Her success in the game allows her to advance to the second phase: mental examinations of one’s nightmares. At the beginning of this stage, Tris is near the bottom of her accepted fellow recruits, but the nightmare phase has no effect on Tris: she is a divergent. Unlike most recruits, who take almost an hour to realize their nightmares are fictitious, she realizes within minutes. Four quickly realizes she is a Divergent during the second phase of training. Four and Tris develop a strong friendship; eventually Four reveals to Tris that he too is Divergent. Four also warns Tris that he believes the Erudite and Dauntless societies are seemingly working on a serum to eliminate Abnegation from society. Later, he lets Tris see his four nightmares, hence his nickname, and how to overcome his fears using skills from the first phase of testing. Tris takes what she learns from Four to conquer her seven fears successfully during the third phase of training.
After successfully completing her training, Tris is initiated as a member of the Dauntless Society. All graduated recruits are given a serum as a supposed tracking device. Shortly thereafter, every member of Dauntless is being controlled by the serum given as a tracking device: it’s a serum developed by the Erudite Society to brainwash the Dauntless soldiers into killing everyone in Abnegation. The serum didn’t affect Tris or Four, but they knew what was happening. Therefore, they chose to find the source of the serum in the Erudite Headquarters, and with help from both of their families, they raided the building and reversed the serum. Tris and Four were heroes, but the leader of Erudite put a bounty on their deaths for circumventing her plan of annihilation. The book ends with Four and Tris escaping to the Amity Society to prevent their impending arrest from Erudite’s supreme leader: Jeanine.
Tris' Webistes
