A Divergence Of Opinion

Word of warning, this is going to potentially be a really long, really meandering post, so be prepared.  I try very hard not to pre-judge a book, or let other reviews or opinions influence me to much before I read and ramble about a book.  It is impossible to be completely unbiased as one usually picks up a book for a reason, the cover, the blurb, the hype, authorship, genre all of these obviously lead to some sort of assumption about the book, but over all I try very hard to read each book with an open mind.  Divergent (book #1 in the Divergent Series) by Veronica Roth is one of those books I have had a hard time reading with an open mind.  On one hand many trusted sources loved this book and recommended it, and they are usually dead on, on the other hand the whole premise of the series just does not work for me on a gut level.  So I figured that if I was to follow my own rules, that if I was going to comment on it, I should probably actually read it first.  I went in hoping it would surprise me, that the premise would have a plausible explanation and that I would not want to toss the main character off a cliff.  I was both pleasantly surprised and understandably disappointed in this book. Why you ask, well lets start with a quick synopsis then you can all listen to me ramble for a couple of paragraphs :-) As always SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!

Sometime in the future the world, or at least the people of Chicago Illinois USA (Happy Birthday Chi-town) have survived some sort of something and have divided into five factions.  The factions are divided on how people think to best avoid another war.  The Amity faction uphold peace at any cost, they are the hippies of the world.  The Candor group believes that complete and utter truth will avoid war.  The Erudite's feel knowledge is the answer to the worlds problems.  The Abnegation Faction is sure that if everybody were selfless war would be extinct.  Finally the Dauntless believe that courage is key to keeping the people safe.  Children live and learn the precepts of their faction until they turn 16, they then undergo a test, kind of an aptitude test that shows what faction a person is most likely to end up in, though that does not mean the person has to choose that faction.  For the most part children tend to stick with the faction they were born into, but there are always exceptions.  Beatrice is one of those exceptions.  She was born into Abnegation a daughter of a ruling council member (in this world only people from Abnegation are allowed to rule as they are seen as being above corruption and always working for other people).  As much as she loves her family, she struggles with being eternally selfless.  She takes her test and is told in hushed tones that she is Divergent, as far as I can tell that means she fits into more then one faction profile, in her case Dauntless, Erudite and Abnegation.  This is potentially bad juju for our heroine and she is told to never tell anyone.  Beatrice

chooses Dauntless as her faction and her brother chooses Erudite, leaving their parents with no children remaining in Abnegation.  Beatrice, or Tris as she now calls herself is put with the other transfers and made to go through a series of bloody, violent, fear inducing tests.  The recruits are told that of the 20 recruits only 10 will be allowed to remain in Dauntless and the rest will have to live factionless. We also meet Four, one of the training instructors, and Eric a sadistic young man who is part of the leadership.  Tris initially does not do so well, but she quickly learns.  Meanwhile the Erudite's have been spreading lies and rumors about the Abnegation leadership, attempting to start a revolution to take power from them. Tris's mother comes to Visiting Day and reveals that she was originally from Dauntless before she chose Abnegation, which completely takes Tris by surprise (GO MAMMA).  Stuff happens, violence ensues and they move on to the second stage of training. This stage is where you start to face your fears and Tris quickly learns to manipulate the simulations, tipping Four off that she is Divergent.  Tris and Four strike up a relationship that is actually kind of sweet and does not involve Four manhandling Tris into compliance with his manly whims.  More stuff and things, more rumors and mayhem, more skulking and secrets and then the final test.  The final test is to go through your fear landscape and find a way to face your fears.  The average number of fears is between 10-15.  Tris finds out that the reason Four is called Four is that he only has Four fears, heights, confined spaces, killing his mom, and his abusive father...who just happens to be the leader of Abnegation.  Tris gets through her test with only 6 fears (she is so special) and is then injected by Eric with a tracker

serum that he says is being given to everybody.  Tris and Four come to an understanding about life and go to the celebration banquet where she finds out she is #1 on the rankings and all her friends made into Dauntless YAY!  She goes to bed and wakes up when her bunkmates all start sleepwalking for lack of a better term.  They all board the train to the Abnegation sector with Tris playing along at being controlled for the sake of trying to save her family.  Four also turns out to be a hidden Divergent and can also resist the commands of the serum.  He and Tris try and save people, but end up captured.  Turns out that the Erudite leader Jeanine and the Dauntless leadership have decided to team up and murder the Abnegation council to take over.  Knowing that most soldiers would never murder innocents in cold blood, the Erudite's created a serum to control them and anybody else they deemed to non docile.  Tris escapes with the help of her mother who also turns out to be Divergent and was sent to Abnegation for her own safety.  Her mother dies protecting her, fulfilling the ultimate selfless act.  Tris finds her father, brother and Marcus (Fours abusive father) and devises a plan to destroy the transmission that is controlling the soldiers.  Along the way her father is also killed protecting her, again displaying the selflessness of his faction.  Tris is able to break Fours conditioning and they stop the transmission.  All is chaos as they head toward the Amity sector for refuge and to decide what to do next.  The End.

As always there is more to the book then what I synopsed (is that a word?) but that is the gist of it.  Now on to my self important rambling about why this book drove me CRAZY!  It was actually a well written book, especially if you compare it to books like The Maze Runner series.  This book had good well fleshed out characters, believable conflict, even the requisite love story had a decent flavor.  My big problem with this book is the basic premise.  The idea that humanity can be divided into one of five emotional/mental states is very interesting, but completely unrealistic.  I can see them trying it as an experiment, but I would guess that it would not hold any sort of pure form for very long.  Humans are made to think in various ways, even the most sheep like of people when pressed will find that nothing is as simple as a single concept.  I have a whole entire list of notes I made while reading this book and they kept coming back to the fact that this society cannot exist, humans would never be able to maintain that kind of discipline, nor would they want to. So 'cause this is my blog I am going to discuss some of the things I think would make this society impossible.  First off if you are forced to choose a single precept to live your life by, I'm pretty sure 16 is the wrong age to do it.  I know as a 16 year old if I was given the choice I would be torn between Erudite and

Dauntless...as would the vast majority of the other 16 year olds I knew.  Who wouldn't want to be the bad ass group, or the group who got to do things.  I cannot think of very many 16 year olds who would purposely choose a life of self sacrifice, especially when you go to school with the other factions and see how much more fun they are.   And then what happens when you grow up, I can tell you right now what I thought was awesome and perfect and wonderful, is not how I think now x+ years later and I am pretty sure in another 15 years my views will have modified again.  So you make a choice based on your impulsive, hormonal, young 16 year old self and have no other options until you die...not gonna happen.  Ok so moving on.  Apparently the main indicator that you are the dreaded Divergent is that you score high in more then one faction during your aptitude test...which the test itself is kind of dumb.  Not only that, but it doesn't matter what the test says you can choose a different faction regardless...so is anybody who chooses a different faction from their test results Divergent?  Also don't most of these factions actually have to spill over into each other, as one character says, it takes a lot of courage to be selfless...so again...wouldn't most humans be Divergent.  This takes me to another issue, their seems to be contradicting information about the rules of factions and Divergent's.  Sometimes the initiates are encouraged to think like other factions, they are told to do some research and be prepared, or to be honest or whatever as a way to enhance and improve.  Other times when a recruit does any of those things they are derided for acting like another faction.  And what about the transfer initiates...are they not automatically Divergent as they spent the last 16 years being trained in another ideal...you don't just lose that training.  Moving on to what the purpose of the factions is.  Apparently in this society if you are in a faction, there are a limited number of jobs you can do.  Abnegation is the ruling council and head of all the volunteer work to restore the city (from what I don't know) and make sure that the

factionless have jobs, food, clothes and shelter (more on the factionless in a minute).  Dauntless can pretty much only do security...and piercing and tattoos of other Dauntless.  Amity farms and gardens.  Erudite does pretty much everything else that is non menial. Candor...well...I'm not sure what Candor actually does other then annoy each other.  All the menial jobs like bus driving and janitorial jobs are forced upon the factionless who are treated like dirt. I hate that the only option to being in one of the five super specific factions is to live in abject poverty as a third class citizen, there is no recourse, no possibility of re factioning, and the worst part is that there are no rules on how or when a person can get kicked out.  Of the 20 initiates in Dauntless they are told at least 10 will be factionless by the end of the trials...16 year olds who had no idea how the trials work and they are screwed for the rest of their lives, not cool.  Again, I do not know of any group of humans who would allow this weirdly skewed society to exist (also if Abnegation were truly selfless, wouldn't the let all the factionless into their faction?).  The reasoning behind Divergent's being a threat finally comes out in the end...but this is a recent development and I am not sure if being Divergent was just recently recognized, or it did not matter before, or what, but again more convenient then sense making.  I could go on and on and on and on and on about how this type of society is impossible with out giving people drugs or shock therapy or a lobotomy, but I think you get my frustration.  It was hard because I would get into the story (and again it was fairly well written) and then they would dump the Divergent premise in their and all I could think about is NO THAT

WOULD NOT HAPPEN.  I am weird though and seem to be in the minority (shocking right ;-) ) Again, it sounds like I hate the book, but I did not, I really enjoyed the characters and their motivation, I loved loved loved the time they spent in the Dauntless challenges, and I even liked the relationship between Tris and Four (yay for no stupid love triangle). Also as a girl who did the Chicago scene for several years (and got myself the worlds best Hubbin while there) I loved how recognizable, yet destroyed the city was.  I will happily read the next two books (though I have been warned about book two) and hope that the author can find a way to convince me that put together the whole series makes sense.  I understood the comparison to the Hunger Games series and not just because it is a YA dystopian trilogy.  There are violent contests, friends, bucking the government and a girl lead who is finding her inner strength, but this is not by any means a copy cat of Hunger Games, it has its own story, its own setting, and its own premise.  I now cannot wait to see the movie and see how it stacks up to the books, and I will get to the next book in the series soon.  I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoyed the Hunger Games...just beware the premise.  I give this book 6 out of 10 lip piercings.

Do I let the premise of books take up to much importance?  What is the most important aspect of a book to you?  What faction would you choose?  What faction would you create? Why is every YA dystopia compared to the Hunger Games?