Divergent Book Project

Book Project #3

Divergent by Veronica Roth

1. Summary:

            When Beatrice Prior turns sixteen years old, her whole world changes. All of her life she has been living with her family in the Abnegation sector of her dystopian society. Located in a futuristic Chicago, her society is split up into five factions: Abnegation, the selfless; Dauntless, the brave; Erudite, the intelligent; Candor, the honest; and Amity, the peaceful. Now, since she has turned sixteen, she gets to decide which faction she wants to spend the rest of her life living and working in. Before making this decision, all sixteen year olds must take an aptitude test to tell them which faction is their best fit. However, something goes wrong during Beatrice’s test and she gets a result split between Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite. This unusual occurrence is called being divergent, something that Beatrice learns is very dangerous. She is told to keep it a secret since her society looks down upon the divergent ones, although she isn’t told why. Forced to face a difficult decision, Beatrice’s feelings are split. She can either stay in Abnegation with her parents and brother, who is also sixteen, or leave for good. Beatrice has never felt that she really belonged in Abnegation, since she has always felt that she’s not selfless enough. She decides that she doesn’t want to choose Erudite, since her father, a city leader, does not like Erudite’s leader, Jeanine. But the Dauntless are something of a mystery to her, and their courageousness has always attracted her attention.

At the choosing ceremony, Beatrice is shocked to find out that her brother Caleb has chosen to transfer to Erudite, and she makes the daring decision and chooses Dauntless. Right away, Beatrice and the other initiates are forced to show their bravery, and Beatrice changes her name to be called Tris. The weeks following of the Dauntless initiation are brutal, and Tris isn’t accepted right away, since she is the only Abnegation transfer. However, Tris makes friends and comes to enjoy being one of the Dauntless. She struggles at first, and it is the initiation leader, Four, that helps her recognize what it truly means to be Dauntless, why Divergence is such a dangerous thing, and how her society may not be as perfect as it seems.

2. Literary Term and Writing Options Combined 4: What is the point of view that the author chose? Rewrite an important scene from a different point of view. Explain how changing the point of view changes how the reader will think/feel.

            The entire book is a first person point of view of Tris’s world, so you never actually get to see how everyone else feels throughout the initiation process. In this passage, I chose to rewrite the capture-the-flag scene from Tris’s friend, Christina’s perspective. From her point of view, we get to see how she feels about Tris getting all of the attention and how she may be a tad bit jealous. This may make the reader feel bad for Christina and realize why she is sometimes so hard on Tris.

            The wind alone whistles in the dead of night. Sitting here on the carousel, guarding our flag, I look out across what used to be more than just a dried up marsh. Maybe it used to actually be pretty, but those days are long gone.

            “Capture the Flag: A Dauntless Tradition. It sounds more fun than it is. What good are we doing just sitting around here?” Uriah mutters.

            “Where are they?” I ask my fellow teammates and initiates, as I peer at them through the darkness that engulfs the city. Tris disappeared half an hour ago and Four has been gone too. Suddenly we hear a creaking sound, as the old Ferris wheel wheezes to life.

            “Why would they turn that on?” Will asks, pointing to the wheel now spinning loudly, as if we couldn’t all tell where the noise was coming from.

            “No clue,” Uriah replies, “But they’d better turn it back off if we’re going to win this thing and beat Eric’s team.”

            Finally I see Tris approaching, walking alongside Four. Both seem to be more awake than any of us, and I figure that they must have had something to do with the Ferris wheel turning on, and it is by no means a short structure. Did they really climb that? I can’t imagine Tris, the Abnegation transfer, doing something so, well, Dauntless. Before I can ask, Four gives us the news we’ve been waiting for.

            “We know where they are,” he says. Tris stands beside him, beaming at us waiting for our reactions. Four explains that Tris came up with the brilliant idea to climb the Ferris wheel to look for the other team.

            Everyone is half asleep, but one Dauntless born initiate manages to ask, “What do we do now, then?”

            “Well, there’s only one thing to do: go find them and capture their flag!” Uriah shouts. He is by far the most enthusiastic of our bunch.

            “Shouldn’t we have a plan first, though? Before we set out?” Will asks, sounding concerned. Of course he would ask this; after all, he was raised Erudite and has the tendency to ask a lot of questions.

            Four agrees and then turns to face Tris, silently asking her what she thinks to do. Everyone’s eyes turn to Tris. Once again, Tris gets all the attention. It’s like everyone, including Four, sees her as our leader.

            “We spit in half,” she says, “Four of us go to the right side of the pier, three to the left.” Her plan involves the group of four acting as the distraction, the bait for all of the paint-gun shots while the other three sneak around to the park at the end of the pier, where the other team is apparently hiding their flag. I’m surprised that I actually agree with her plan. I’m shocked; I didn’t know the Stiff could be so smart.

            Uriah’s smile beams through the darkness, as he says, “Sounds like a good plan. Let’s get this night over with, shall we?”

Tris smiles back at him and the three of us run together towards the pier. My heart racing, the pure adrenaline moving me, I become excited and nervous all wrapped up into one. This is what being Dauntless is all about. We all run on the energy we get from taking risks. Although the worst that could happen tonight is being hit by a paintball, we are The Brave, and I absolutely love it. When we reach the flag, I want to be the one to take it. I want some credit, for something other than just sitting around on a fake horse guarding our own flag.

As we near the end of the pier, we grow silent and slow down so that our footsteps won’t be heard. Then we hear the others, the distraction, and we hear the sounds of paintballs being fired back and forth.

As soon as we see the orange flag gleaming through the tree branches, we rush to it, as it is almost completely unguarded now that everyone is involved in the fighting. Uriah shoots the one remaining guard on the leg with a paintball, and it splats a bright purple against her dark clothing. She angrily throws her gun to the ground, since she can no longer do anything to stop us.

I immediately realize that the tree branch is too high for Tris, and I breathe in a sigh of relief. We both reach for it, but she is much too short to grab it.

“Come on, Tris,” I say, “You’re already the hero of the day. And you know you can’t reach it anyway.”

I look down at her graciously, and then I reach up and snatch the flag from the branch. At once the whole team surrounds me, and I shout and cheer along with them. We’ve won! I raise the flag above our heads and everyone clusters around me to raise it up higher and higher. This, I must say, is one reason why I transferred to Dauntless.

(Note: “the Stiff” is what some Dauntless refer to Tris as, since she was born and raised in Abnegation. Tris takes it as an insult to her strength as she is trying to become a member of the Dauntless.)

3. AP Writing Prompt: Writers often highlight the values of a culture or society by using characters who are alienated from that culture or society because of gender, race, class, or creed. Choose a play or novel in which such a character plays a significant role and show how that character's alienation reveals the surrounding society's assumptions and moral values.

            Tris was born and raised in Abnegation, taught to view the world as a place that needed her help. However, Tris never really felt as though she belonged there, since selflessness didn’t come as naturally to her as it did her brother and others her age. She somehow knew that she was different from the rest of the Abnegation members, and that is why she felt she had to leave, because she felt as though she would never be good enough. Tris recognizes that she is selfish, and sees the world differently from her fellow faction members, including her own family.

Tris becomes more alienated from her society when she finds out that she is one of the divergent. To her society, she is a threat. She poses a problem that was never meant to occur, and her society, really just the Erudite leader, feels the need to get rid of those like her. Tris has no clue why divergence is such a bad thing, and it is Tori, the woman who administered the aptitude test, that explains why it must be kept a secret.

Luckily for Tris, Tori had a younger brother who was divergent. He was too good for his faction, too good for his society. During his initiation into Dauntless, he didn’t do so well during the first stage of initiation, the fighting, and neither did Tris. However, he got ahead during the second stage, when the initiates were given simulations of their worst fears, since he, like Tris, was conscious that he was only in a mere simulation. For the others who aren’t able to recognize this, figuring out how to end the simulation is much harder and takes much longer. The divergent are able to control the simulations, and their minds recognize the solution to their problem and execute it flawlessly. Since Tori’s brother was so quick at working his way out of the simulations, the Dauntless leaders took notice of him. Keeping a close eye on him, they soon realized he was divergent, and he was killed because of it. Tori doesn’t want that happening to anyone else, so she keeps Tris’s secret and changes her aptitude results to protect her.

Tris is seen by her peers as weak and frail, since she is short and small, but they don’t know how strong she really is. They have no clue what she is capable of. Divergence isn’t a well known thing. The only ones who know about it are the leaders, some adults, and those who are divergent themselves. The divergent are unable to be controlled. While others can be brainwashed when given the simulation serum, which was developed by Erudite's leader, Jeanine, for some reason the divergent remain conscious. They can tell when they are under someone else’s control, and they are able to manipulate their way out.

Through Tris, we see how dangerous divergence is in her society. Jeanine and other leaders who seek control and power over the entire society despise the divergent since they are the irregular ones, the ones that can't be controlled. Jeanine, being Erudite, will stop at nothing to solve her way to a simulation serum that surpasses even the divergent mind. She is so power hungry that she will stop at nothing, even resulting to killing members of other factions, to get what she wants. She wants to make the laws. She wants to rule the people and have them do whatever she wishes, under her undeniable control.

Tris grew up thinking that her society was perfect, that the factions all got along as a result of the downfall of the society previous to their own. Tris soon realizes that her world is falling apart at the seams, and she can’t stop it from happening. Factions turn against one another, striving for power to implement their own ideas. All Tris can do is fight back, for what she believes is right, and hope that others will join her in this ultimate power struggle.