Divergent (Social Issues)

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At first glance, Divergent sounds like a more artificial version of Hunger Games. In a dark dystopian future, everyone must have only one personality trait. But the film version does a good job of revealing how this story really is about social engineering. Although Divergent clearly wants to be the next Hunger Games, it is not really made from the same cloth: Hunger Games has a pretty clear message about the gulf between the rich and everyone else, and about how the powerful use media culture and the spectacle of violence to control dissent. Meanwhile, Divergent is by no means as violent, nor as sombre as Hunger Games, nor does it have the same level of social relevance.

Divergent's basic premise is the following one: in a horrible future, the world is a wasteland except Chicago, which is a walled city. Within the walls of Chicago, everyone belongs to one of five "factions" representing different virtues: courage, kindness, honesty, self-sacrifice and intelligence. Whatever faction you belong to, that is the trait you live by. But as the film version makes clear in its initial moments, this arrangement is much more about the division of labor (the Dauntless faction of brave people are soldiers and policemen, the Abnegation faction of selfless people runs the government, and for some reason the friendly faction of Amity are kind people and farmers).

And so, all this baroque allegory becomes a much more commentary on the dangers of extreme specialization, and let your work define you. And the society that engendered this strange structure becomes an example of social engineering taken to ruthless extremes. As we have been told, this approach of categorizing everyone has to do with control. So in Divergent, Beatrice (also known as Tris) is born into the Abnegation faction that theoretically handles things while eating porridge and is generally Quaker. One day, Tris goes to the personality testing center to find out which faction she should join, now that she is old enough, and discovers that she does not fit exactly into any of the five factions. The main reason for this is that she is... Divergent.


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