Divergent Literary Analysis Essay Example

Divergent, a dystopian novel by Veronica Roth, is set in a post-apocalyptic city (that’s caged by fences) which is divided into 5 different factions (groups). The Dauntless are fearless, Abnegation are selfless, Candor are honest, Amity are peaceful, and Erudite are intelligent. The Abnegation are the leaders of all the factions. Every 16 year old has to take an aptitude test to decide their faction (which they will spend the rest of their life with). The story starts with Beatrice Prior (a 16 year old Abnegation) who wants to be free from the controlling ways of Abnegation, but her test results say she can be Dauntless, Erudite, or Abnegation (she is called a Divergent), so she is split between the three, and doesn’t know what to choose. Her parents want her to stay in Abnegation, but she has always wanted to be Dauntless, so she ends up choosing Dauntless. Beatrice wants more than anything to fit into Dauntless, but the initiation is very difficult and requires her to completely change her Abnegation character, so she ends up changing how she looks, thinks, and acts for Dauntless. She even changed her name to Tris. The Erudite and Dauntless want to overthrow and take control of the government, but they have to find a way to control the Dauntless initiatives and make them fight against the Abnegation, so they end up injecting a serum into all the Dauntless that controls them and makes them take over Abnegation. Tris wants to stop the serum, but Four (Tris’s trainer and boyfriend, who is also Divergent) is protecting the main control room (where everybody is being controlled from) and he is under mind control (his friends look like enemies, and enemies look like friends) so Tris ends up confronting him. Tris wants Four to break out of the mind control, but the new serum is designed so that even Divergents can’t break through (with the previous serum, Divergents could break through it), so Tris points her gun at herself, to make it seem like she will shoot herself if Four doesn’t break out of the mind control. She wanted to show Four that she didn’t want to live in a world without him. Four was able to break out of the mind control, and together, they removed the hard drive (the main part of the mind control system) and stopped the simulation serum. I think a theme of this book is that it takes time to find your identity, and you can’t just choose what your entire life will be like as a teenager. As I stated in the summary, when children turn 16, they have to choose which faction they want to be in, and we know that each faction has a different way of life, so this is a very big decision. In other words, they are choosing their identity (who they want to be) for the rest of their life. Making somebody permanently choose their entire identity at 16 is ridiculous. That is the age at which they should be trying to find their perfect identity, not permanently choosing. Even in our world, it is impossible to find who you are at 16. Any choice you make will most likely seem to be the wrong one, later on in life. I saw this happen many times with Tris: she was unable to stick to one faction. Sometimes she felt like she belonged among the Dauntless, and others she felt like she would be better off with the people of Abnegation. This shows how it takes time to find your identity because Tris felt, at many times throughout the book, that she didn’t make the right choice (she would be better off with another faction). This means that her choice was premature, and she should’ve seen in more depth what life would be like in each of the other factions to see which one she would like the most. In other words, she needed more time to make the right choice. In the book, Tris also realizes that nobody around her has a truly fixed identity. For example, Four (or Tobias) was seen as a classic example of a Dauntless, but later on, in the book, Tris found out that he was also an Abnegation (he came from Abnegation, and at times, felt like he was better off with Abnegation). Another example is Tris’s mother: Tris thought she was a perfect example of an Abnegation, but during Visiting Day, she found out that she was also Dauntless (she came from Dauntless, and has Dauntless tattoos). What this shows is that nobody can always be Dauntless or Abnegation (or any other faction). In other words, people’s identities change all the time, and forcing someone to choose one at a young age will only cause them to be frustrated with their choice. 

I wonder if Tris’s mom had ever thought about being any other faction (Erudite, Amity, or Candor). I know that Tris’s brother (Caleb) chose Erudite (at the choosing ceremony), and I wonder if their mom had a relationship with Erudite, which would mean Erudite is part of their DNA. One of Tris’s three factions that she could be (remember, she was Divergent) was Erudite, so maybe Erudite was in their DNA. I also wonder if Tris’s mom was also Divergent. 

At the end of the book, I saw Tris recognize and embrace the truth. Throughout the book, she had been bouncing back and forth between different factions. But in the final paragraph, she realizes that she will have to “go beyond” any one of these factions. She realizes that identity can’t be decided at 16, it takes many, many years to fully find.