Veronica Roth: “Divergent” – Book Review
The first book is about the development of a girl and dealing with fears.
Choose your five most important trades of character. Would it be courage, selflessness, kindness, knowledge and honesty? In the future city of Chicago, the population is divided into five factions, each of them believes in one of those virtues. Protagonist Tris belongs to the faction believing in selflessness. This is also the faction that constitutes government because their people are incorruptible.
In the age of 16, young adults are allowed to choose whether they want to stay with their actual fraction or start a new life with a new one. But Tris has a big problem: She is divergent. Her test to which fraction she would fit best is not precisely. She has to hide this fact because her society hunts and kills those people. She decides to leave her fraction and family to become a Dauntless, the fraction believing in courage. It’s a kind of modern police, because their people protect the city.
The beginning of Tris’ journey.
Two thirds of the book deal with Tris facing her initiation and trying not to be discovered as divergent. In this process she gets to know her mentor Four, a mysterious character. In the end, Tris has to protect her former fraction and from then on, the real journey begins.
The story of Divergent is excellent to get to know the society system and the characters. Tris’ parents, her brother and her new Dauntless friends develop throughout the story and the reader can really imagine life in this dystopia.
The biggest benefit of the book compared to the movie is that the background of the society is better understandable and the reader learns more about Tris’ family and her former fraction. The story also has a higher level of interpretation, because the reader automatically starts to think about virtues and especially about fears and how to deal with it.