The unique name and meaning is what intrigued me to read this book. But as I read more, I realized that the title wasn’t the only intriguing thing. The story was so interesting, it was as if the plot was forcing me to turn the pages.
Divergent by Veronica Ross is a story set in a dystopian society where there are five factions: Amity(Peaceful) ,Erudite(Intelligent) Candor(Honest) ,Abnegation(Selfless) , and Dauntless(Brave) .
When a person turns sixteen, they must choose a faction to spend the rest of their life in. The main character Beatrice Prior chooses to join Dauntless and through her point of view we can see that the author has added an abundant amount of themes and real world problems that many of her readers can relate to. This includes social hierarchy, equality, identity, and even love. Overall this book is amazing because the reader can really relate to many parts of the book which really helps the reader understand the book.
It’s amazing how the author of the story manages to include real world problems in her book. One problem that really stood out to me was equality. Veronica Roth starts the story by describing the 5 factions as different but equal and depending on each other for survival. Chaos erupts in this seemingly peaceful society when the Erudite because of their knowledge believe they are better than all the other factions. Because the Erudite believe that Abnegation and Candor does not contribute to the “system of survival” (Amity supplies food, hospitals, and health care, Erudite provides technology and knowledge, and Dauntless provides protection), they resent Abnegation and Candor.
As a result, they uses the other factions to get rid of Abnegation and Candor. They in particular dislike Abnegation because they provide nothing while Candor can still provide the truth serum which forces the person under the serum to tell the truth. To sum it all up, they believe the Abnegation are on the bottom of the food chain, and therefore not worthy to be a part of the utopia they’ll create.
A very recent example of this is how Trump and his supporters are trying to build a wall around Mexico so immigrants can’t come in. Just as Erudite believe they are better than Abnegation, Trump and his supporters feel the same way about Mexico. Perhaps the most well known event relating to this concept is The Holocaust.
During World War Two, Adolf Hitler mass murdered Jewish people because they were inferior to the Germans. Even today we have many problems like this and the author clearly feels this is a problem that we have to fix immediately. And through her book she tries to teach this very important lesson that everyone needs to learn.
The lack of equality right now is a problem and the author clearly agrees. She has me thinking about this real world problem. This book teaches it’s okay to be different as long as we treat each other as equal. And this is the very important lesson we can learn from this very extraordinary book.
