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CHAPTER 1
WHAT'S IN THIS BOOK?
Welcome to The Divergent Companion! In this book, you'll learn all about the backbones of the Divergent world created by Veronica Roth. By now, you may have seen the movie, due in theaters from Summit Entertainment–Lions Gate in March 2014. Or you may be anticipating the Divergent film while reading the trilogy of novels for the third or fourth time.
Because this is a companion to the world of Divergent, I assume that you've already read the three books, Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant. Hence, I don't tell you what you already know: the chronology of events, what characters explicitly say and do, and so forth. Instead, I fill in all the gaps and answer your questions about how this world might work and why things might happen as they do.
You'll learn the answers to burning questions, such as:
* Do the factions actually make sense? Do we have factions in the real world, and if so, what are they?
* Are we all more Divergent than we think?
* How might the serums and transmitters work? Are they at all realistic?
* How far away are we in the real world to the genetic manipulations in Allegiant?
* Is it possible to change an entire population and alter the way everybody thinks by toying with genes?
* Are mirror neurons real, and do they make people think in a more divergent fashion?
* What does creativity have to do with the Divergent?
* How is Tris's brain really wired?
* Is it true, as Tris worries, that the size of our brain sections determines who we are and what we do, that our brain anatomy defines our entire personalities?
* What is the Milgram experiment, and how does it tie in to the events of the Divergent trilogy?
* How do the serums and neurotransmitters really work? Is all this possible?
* How do the simulations really work? Are they possible?
* How does a simulation induce fear in somebody?
* Can two people be inside the same simulation at the same time?
and much more.
The Divergent film features Shailene Woodley in the role of Tris Prior and twenty-eight-year-old Theo James as Tobias/Four. At five feet eight inches, Shailene Woodley is taller than I imagined the tiny Tris, but remarkably, her face reminds me of how I envisioned Tris while reading the trilogy. She's twenty-one years old and already has an impressive list of acting credentials. Academy Award–winner Kate Winslet, famous for her roles in movies such as Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio, plays Jeanine Matthews, the leader of the Erudite faction. With a cold sharpness, she brings an edge to the character.
The author of the Divergent series, Veronica Roth, grew up in Barrington, Illinois, and now lives in Chicago with her husband, Nelson Fitch. She was born in 1988 and achieved phenomenal literary success at a very young age. Her work has won accolades such as New York Times Bestseller, USA Today Bestseller, Publishers Weekly Best Book, and School Library Journal Best Book. As of this writing, the first two novels in the series have sold more than three million copies.
Now that the Divergent trilogy has come to a close, fans await news about Veronica Roth's next project while eagerly reading her e-stories about Tobias/Four. In addition, you can settle back, flip to the next page, and start discovering all the gritty details behind the world of Divergent!
VERSIONS OF THE NOVELS REFERENCED IN THIS BOOK
Divergent. New York: HarperCollins, first paperback edition, 2011.
Insurgent. New York: HarperCollins, first hardcover edition, 2012.
Allegiant. New York: HarperCollins, first hardcover edition, 2013.
CHAPTER 2
FACTIONS AND FREE WILL
We're all born into factions of some kind. Our grandparents or parents may be immigrants from another country, they may be of a particular ethnicity or religion, they may be in a particular socioeconomic class. If you live on what we used to call "the wrong side of the tracks," you're already forced into a faction simply based on where you live. It'll be awfully tough for you to cross the tracks and mingle with the people who are financially and socially much different from your family. If you're Amish or an Orthodox Jew, then at birth, you're in a faction of sorts, one that strongly prefers that you don't marry into another group. Even being female places you into a faction in our society. You're limited — and I don't care how liberal we are compared to what we were like as a society several decades ago — when you enter traditionally male occupations.
Even within our modern-day factions, we have subfactions. Join any group, go to any high school, and you'll see what I mean.
It's striking how the members of the Divergent factions in what Veronica Roth says is based on Chicago are primarily white American-born people. When asked why she chose Chicago as her setting, she says that she lived "next to" Chicago from the age of five, and that she originally wanted to write about the Dauntless riding the Chicago trains. In Divergent, where are the immigrants who live in Chicago and the overall United States now? In Divergent, where are the minorities, the handicapped, the mentally challenged, and the mentally ill? Where is the prison population?
According to the United States Census Bureau, foreign-born immigrants — that is, people who literally move to the United States from other countries — range from somewhere between 11 million people to 13.8 million people. In addition, experts state that all legal and illegal immigrants plus their children now account for 80 percent of the United States population growth in the past decade, and indeed, immigrants and their children make up one-sixth of the overall population. Immigrants often are divided (though perhaps not by choice) into what we can think of as factions based on nation, language, and other reasons. Many still speak their foreign languages and don't yet know English. Sadly, many immigrants tend to be much lower on the socioeconomic scale than non-immigrant Americans. This means that many immigrants live apart from non-immigrant Americans, their children attend different schools, their neighborhoods have different customs and codes: in short, many live in different factions, separate from the non-immigrant Americans.
In our modern society, those who are on welfare probably don't associate much with those who live in New York City penthouses. Those who live in poverty in the Deep South aren't hobnobbing with New England socialites. In Chicago, a pocket neighborhood of native-born Chinese probably aren't hanging out with a pocket neighborhood of native-born Peruvians across town.
In fact, let's look specifically at Chicago, where Veronica Roth has set Divergent and Insurgent. According to the 2010 census, more than 2.5 million people live in Chicago. For those of you who like precision, the number is 2,695,598.
Of this number, 1,212,835 are white people, who seem to dominate the factions in Divergent and Insurgent. In reality, less than half the people in Chicago are white. In real Chicago, 32 percent of the population is African American, 5½ percent is Asian, close to 29 percent is Hispanic or Latino, and so forth. While I'm puzzled by the lack of diversity among the people in all of Veronica Roth's factions, I'm also fascinated by the factions themselves, what they mean, and how they interact.
One of the main messages in the trilogy is that people are innately at war with each other; squabbling is something humans just can't seem to live without, and no matter what we do to heal our wounds, cease bickering, and form a more cohesive society, we fail. At the end of Insurgent, Amanda Marie Ritter — otherwise known as Edith Prior and Tris's ancestor from seven generations back — shows bloody clips of violence perpetrated by people against their fellow citizens. In Allegiant, the leader of the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, David, explains that almost half the people in the United States died in the Purity War a hundred years ago. It's human nature, writes Veronica Roth, that makes us violent against each other. In fact, in Allegiant, we're told that violence might be rooted in a person's genetic makeup.
Diversity is a big buzzword on college campuses these days, and the Divergent as an offshoot of Veronica Roth's factions are made up of people who are able to understand how other people think and why they act as they do. Supposedly, the minds of the Divergent are more flexible than those in the other factions. But we'll circle back to all of this in a minute.
First, let's talk a bit more about free will, free thought, and freedom versus the notion of factions, in general. Then we'll pick up with brief descriptions and analyses of the various factions in the Divergent series.
Why do I want to talk about free will, free thought, and freedom in the context of Divergent? Because those who remain in Abnegation believe they are choosing freely to do so, those in Candor do the same, and so forth. Each person as a teenager either stays in his or her birth faction or switches to another faction during a special Choosing Ceremony. This word, Choosing, implies that free will, free thought, and freedom are all central to being in the various factions. Most teenagers remain with their family's faction, but some leap off into the strange, new worlds of other factions. Free choice. Supposedly.
But is it really free choice? I would argue that very little about these factions involves free will and free choice.
Right off the bat, I'm reminded of both the Aptitude Test and the complex and harrowing initiation stages that Beatrice Prior, aka Tris, completes. First, let's think about the Aptitude Test that supplies each teenager with an outcome leading to one of the five factions. Of course, if someone is Divergent, then various traits can point to multiple factions. Does this Aptitude Test allow teenagers to use their own free will in determining the faction to which they are most suited? Not really. It's a simulation, which starts when the person chooses between two things, and the choice moves the person to the next step — sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Well, imagine if you don't want to select either choice. Suppose you're presented with options such as a roasted newborn calf (ugh) and a machine gun (ugh). Now, there's no way I'd choose the roasted newborn calf, and if forced to select, I'd have to go with the machine gun, which might thrust me into the camp of the Dauntless. I am not at all suited to being a Dauntless, and I'd have no freedom of choice in this outcome, would I? Or suppose that you're a very slow learner, perhaps learning disabled, and you must choose rapidly between two things you don't even understand. There's no way you could make a sensible choice, and you (like me in the above example) would have no free will in choosing your faction. Maybe I'd end up Divergent along with my learning-disabled friend. This is somewhat how Tris ends up with the Divergent label: because she first refuses to choose between the first two simulation options, the cheese and the knife.
After this first phase of the simulation, let's say we're presented with something similar to the dog in Tris's Aptitude Test. Perhaps you're a dog lover, who actually trains dogs. Perhaps you're dense and don't understand that this is just a simulation and the dog can't hurt you. Perhaps you're so incredibly terrified of dogs that even knowing this is a simulation, you get hysterical. In this last case, your unconscious mind is taking over and making you terrified. You have no control, no free will, over your lifelong terror of large, growling beasts. Your choice is not truly made with free will.
Our mental states are based on neurotransmissions, neural conditions, interactions among our brain cells. By mental states, I'm referring to such things as desires and beliefs. Without these biological and chemical entities and functions, our mental states cannot exist. We cannot choose anything if these minute processes in our brains cease to function. Over time, as our mental states evolve, neural pathways are emphasized — strengthened by use — or de-emphasized, thus reinforcing the neurotransmissions, neural conditions, and interactions among our brain cells. It's a bit of a circular pattern, this logic, just as the more we do something like play baseball, the better we are at it, which in turn, strengthens our throwing arm or leg muscles. The more we use certain pathways in our brain, the stronger a mental state becomes, strengthening the pathways themselves.
If our desires and beliefs hinge on mental processes that aren't under our constant, minute control, then how can we be held accountable for our actions? Are all of Erudite evil just because Jeanine Matthews is evil? Are all of Dauntless cruel just because some of its members are cruel? I would argue that the individual Erudite and Dauntless are not exercising free will when they follow their leaders, Jeanine and Eric, for if they were operating under free will, they might choose to overthrow their leaders and the entire systems under which they function. Conversely, are Jeanine Matthews and Eric responsible for their horrible behaviors, ideas, and actions, or are their factions responsible because they allow Jeanine and Eric to lead them? Here, I would argue that Jeanine and Eric are indeed operating with free will, because only they can stop leading their factions with such brutality and contempt for human life. Of course, we learn late in Insurgent that Dauntless leader Eric is actually an Erudite in disguise.
So within the confines of Chicago for a hundred years before the events of Divergent, why don't the people exercise a little free will and overthrow their terrible leaders? I believe it's because they are basically brainwashed into thinking that they have freedom, that whatever faction they are in happens to be the best faction for them. They don't know about the Purity War, they don't know about the genetic manipulations, they don't know what exists outside the fence around Chicago. Even as far into the series as Allegiant, Tris points out that Evelyn hasn't liberated the people of Chicago and given them free will. Yes, she destroys the factions, but she also immediately imposes all sorts of new rules and regulations, such as curfews. And without the factions, chaos and violence erupt, and people are killed.
In our culture, in reality, we also think we have free will, and in believing we choose our own destinies, we function in a more moral manner than if we thought we had no control over our own lives. In an interesting 2008 study, psychology professors Kathleen D. Vohs and Jonathan W. Schooler showed that people do indeed act with higher moral standards when they think they are operating with free will. This is similar to factions such as Abnegation, in which people are morally very good, helping the poor, giving rather than taking; the Abnegation believe they have chosen their faction and their way of life, and hence, they act in a moral fashion. The Abnegation represents our moral code as in "do unto others as you'd like them to do unto you" and "help other people at all times." These ideas are ground into our major Western religions and charities, and into youth groups such as the Scouts. If they did not choose Abnegation, if instead they were forced into the faction, then would they be so morally uprighteous? Probably not.
Similarly, if they realized the constraints upon them as faction members, they might be a bit resentful and not so selfless. After all, if you know that you don't have the free will to do what you want, you also know that your efforts to change things will most likely be futile. Poor Al wants to fit into the Dauntless and appear tough when he's not at all tough. He'd be a lot better off if he could realize that he can't change anything, that even being Factionless would beat what happens to him in Dauntless. "Choosing" to switch from Candor, Al's honesty in saying that he's afraid gets him into trouble with Eric during the knife-throwing scene. The Divergent Tris, on the other hand, who does exercise free will to determine her fate and her actions, steps in and takes Al's place as the knife target. She displays the bravado of Dauntless and the selflessness of Abnegation. Also, when she tells Eric that bullies are cowards, she's being not only Dauntless brave, but Erudite smart as well. She outwits Eric at his own idiotic bullying game. All he can do is prod her into taking Al's place. Tobias, aka Four, who is presumed Divergent until the events in Allegiant, displays Dauntless bravery, selfless Abnegation, and Erudite knowledge, too, because he's the guy who is going to throw the knives at Tris. Four purposely nicks Tris's ear and insults her while throwing knives at her. This is all a ruse to make Eric think he's still really in control; but he's not. While Four supposedly has gene damage, he also has genetic "components" that enable him to know what he's doing during the simulations. So he is Divergent-like.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Divergent Companion"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Lois H. Gresh.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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