"I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest." ― Four, Divergent
Factions before Blood.
Our next world is perhaps the one with the least amount of background information. Granted, there is some information, but the author chose to focus more on the story at hand than going in-depth into the history of life before. Written by Veronica Roth and published by Harper Collins Children’s Books in 2011, the story of Divergent takes place in a futuristic, dystopian Chicago where society has been sorted into five factions. Each of the five factions values one a specific virtue, and its members work to cultivate said virtue throughout their lives. The factions are as follows: 1. Abnegation. This faction values selflessness; their concern lies with the needs of others above the needs of oneself. 2. Amity. This faction values peace; their main focus in life is to cultivate peace and harmony in their lives. 3. Erudite. This faction values knowledge and intelligence above all else; they focus their lives on the pursuit of knowledge. 4. Dauntless. This faction values bravery; they strive to become courageous and indestructible, almost fearless. 5. Candor. This faction values honesty above everything else; they believe honesty and trustworthiness are the foundations of morality and character, and they attempt to cultivate honesty in every aspect of their lives.
Until the age of sixteen, children are born and raised in the faction their parents chose. Once they come of age (sixteen years old), they are put through an aptitude test to help them determine which faction would be the best fit for them; this being said, the testing day is held on the same date every year so some children may be close to their seventeenth birthday by the time the testing is done. Shortly after their aptitude tests, the Choosing Ceremony takes place in which they are given the opportunity to choose which faction they want to spend the rest of their lives in; it doesn’t necessarily have to be the faction they grew up in. Often times when a teenager chooses another faction, they never see their family again as the factions do not interact with one another frequently. More on the individual factions can be found here if you’re interested.
Those living in Chicago believe that the world outside their city is completely devastated and in complete ruin; the safety of their city and the walls surrounding it is all that remains. The reality of the situation is quite different. In truth, Chicago is one of quite a few large-scale social experiments intended to correct “genetic damage” which was caused by experiments performed by the US government; these experiments were intended to rid citizens of unwanted characteristics such as violence, greed, cowardice, dishonesty, lesser intelligence. Experimenting with genetic splicing (also known as genetic manipulation), the scientists attempted to “correct” these negative qualities, but the alterations to the genetic codes had disastrous consequences; instead of fixing what they considered problematic traits, these experiments damaged the genes. Turning off these “bad genes” (similar to what the factions strive to do on a behavioral scale) only manifested new problems; for the traits that were gained, another was lost.
“The Dauntless were brave but cruel; the Erudite, intelligent but vain; the Amity, peaceful but passive; the Candor, honest but inconsiderate; the Abnegation, selfless but stifling” (123)
A civil war, which would be known as the Purity War, erupted in the United States; it pitted those with damaged genes against the government and everyone else who possessed pure genes. This war was believed to be high destructive to North America, having eliminated half the population of North America. In the wake of the war, the people who survived demanded some sort of solution to the problem, and so the US government created the Bureau of Genetics Welfare; eventually, they became the new governing body, and these city-wide social experiments started soon after. The addition of the factions put in place in Chicago were the Bureau’s way of adding a behavioral modification element to the experiments.
Like in the other lessons, we're going to give a brief introduction to the main and a few the supporting characters we see throughout the novel before going into the plot.
Beatrice Prior a.k.a. Tris.
Tris is probably one of my favorite characters throughout this series, though that is usually to be expected from the protagonist of a series. At the start of the novel, she has been sixteen years old for a few months. Tris was born in the Abnegation faction, and she was known as Beatrice until she transferred factions and chose a new name. While Beatrice is quiet and reserved on the outside like the rest of her faction, she struggles with some of the Abnegation values and feels like she doesn’t truly belong there. Tris, on the other hand, is strong-willed, courageous, and disinclined to show weakness, especially during the Dauntless initiation. While she feels at home in Dauntless by the end of the novel, Tris also feels strong ties to the family she left behind. No matter how hard she tries, a part of her will always be Abnegation.
It should be noted that most Divergent have an aptitude for two factions, but Tris was placed into three different factions after her aptitude test: Erudite, Abnegation, and Dauntless. This will be very important in the later novels; eventually, it is revealed that she has an aptitude for all five factions.
Tobias Eaton a.k.a. Four
Four is by far my favorite male character in the entire series – my second favorite character in the series. When we first meet him, all we know is that he is the instructor specifically for the Dauntless transfer initiates, and he’s two years older than Tris. Initially, he is an elusive and mysterious presence in the novel, but after a while he becomes close to Tris – feeling drawn to her – and he’s one of the very few people that she trusts, particularly with her secret about being Divergent. Four’s real name is Tobias Eaton. While he was originally born in Abnegation, like our favorite Dauntless girl, he was born to a high-power, highly abusive father; he transferred factions to get away from his father. Eventually, Tris and Four grow close, and the two begin a relationship. Tris is one of the few who knows his real name and who his father is. Like Tris, he is also Divergent; based on the background of the society introduced in the third novel, though, this could be debated as he is not 100% Divergent.
The Prior Family (Natalie, Andrew, and Caleb)
Tris’ parents are Natalie and Andrew Prior, and she has a brother named Caleb who is roughly ten months older than her.
Natalie was born the daughter of a Dauntless leader, and she herself was Divergent. When she was older, Natalie’s mother warned her that there were people in the Dauntless leadership who were searching for Divergents; her mother advised her that she needed to get out of Dauntless and go somewhere her Divergence wouldn’t be noticeable. When she was sixteen, Natalie chose to transfer to the Abnegation faction and began a new life where she could lay low. While she seems to be the picture of Abnegation – nothing but selfless and kindhearted, always thinking of others before herself – she is later revealed to have strong inner core that is also the work of her Dauntless upbringing. Just before Tris transferred from Abnegation, Natalie told her daughter that she would love her no matter what; it is highly suggested that she knew Tris was going to transfer. She also has a tattoo from her life before Abnegation. You can find more about Natalie’s life here, though it is heavy with spoilers.
Andrew Prior is Tris’ father. Later on in his life, he became a member of the city council and became an effective and influential man in the city. He was born in the Erudite faction, but transferred to Abnegation after seeing an increase in the insistence of human experimentation in the Erudite faction; seeing this behavior began his distrust and dislike/hatred of Erudite. Growing up, his parents were close friends with Jeanine Matthews’ family. When he was in school, he began to get tutoring from Natalie Wright, and the two of them fell in love with each other. When it came time to choose a faction, the two of them chose Abnegation and began a new life together. Andrew is the true epitome of Abnegation. Much like his wife, he’s selflessness and always doing what's best for the people around him, though he has a moment of selfishness later on, feeling betrayed when his children transfer factions. More on Andrew’s life can be found here, though it is heavy with spoilers.
Ah, Caleb. Caleb is…well…honestly, he’s one of my least favorite characters in that he annoys the crap out of me throughout the entire series; especially in the latter novels, I really want to punch him most of the time. That is beside the point, though. Caleb Prior is Tris’ brother. While they’re not truly twins, they are what is called Irish twins; the two of them were born within less than a year of each other. Caleb was born first, then roughly ten or eleven months later, Tris was born. Growing up, Caleb always seemed just like his parents – completely selfless and happy to help others whenever he could. This was why his transfer to Erudite was such a large shock for his family. No one in his family had truly known, but he harbored a secret fondness for books and learning; he had an incessantly inquisitive nature that he worked tirelessly to keep hidden from his family and fellow Abnegation members. Given his father’s hatred of Erudite, it is easy to believe that Andrew was hurt the deepest by Caleb’s choice to move to Erudite – even more so than Beatrice’s transfer to Dauntless. Caleb and Tris shared a very close bond as siblings while growing up, but their bond fractured a bit when they transferred to separate factions, especially given that he transferred to Erudite. Later in the first novel, when Caleb finds out what Erudite was really doing, he leaves the faction and chooses to help his family during the rebellion. You can find more about Caleb here, though spoilers are abundant on the page.
Christina
Christina was born in Candor, and thus she has a very outspoken personality; at times she can be incredibly blunt and honest, but she is also brave, witty, and loyal (though this does waver a bit at one point). The reason for her transfer is not known, but she transferred to the faction the same time that Tris did. Christina is the first friend in her new faction that Tris makes; Christina helped her get onto the train. As the book progresses, she begins a relationship with fellow Dauntless-transfer initiate, Will. After Tris gets invited to go on a Dauntless-born initiation ritual and she does not, Christina begins to show a bit of jealousy, though it doesn’t really affect their friendship until Tris earns first place in the second stage of initiation. After Tris is attacked, their friendship slowly starts to mend itself. It is unlikely that Christina is Divergent considering she fell victim to Jeanine’s control serum. Christina is another character that gets on my nerves a bit, but her friendship with Tris is also very important.
Tori Wu
While it hasn’t been confirmed, it is believed that Tori was born in the Erudite faction, and she had an older brother who had also transferred to Dauntless; her brother was Divergent and killed because of it; this is why Tori works so hard to help protect Tris. Beatrice first meets Tori when she is taking her aptitude test. Tori is the one who administers the test itself, and quickly realizes that the young girl is Divergent. Tori risks her own life when she manually changes Tris’ test results (by deleting said results) to help Tris hide her Divergence. Tori tells Tris to keep the results to herself before explaining what Divergence is when Tris continues to question her. Back in Dauntless, she works as a tattoo artist in the Pit. She has a tattoo of a black and white hawk with red eyes on the back of her neck; this tattoo symbolizes the sun and helps to remind her of how she overcame her fear of the dark. Given a scene at the end of the next novel, it is fully possible that Tori is actually Divergent herself and managed to hide it well because of what happened to her brother.
Peter Hayes
Ah, Peter. Peter is someone who...while I absolutely love to hate him in the novels, I kind of love his character in the films. Whether that is Miles Teller’s portrayal of him or something else entirely, I’m not sure, but still. He’s an interesting character in many ways. Peter plays the role of the central pain in Tris’ side throughout a majority of the series; he redeems himself a bit in the end, but he’s easy to hate in the first novel. He is cold, cruel, and ruthless – determined to do whatever it takes to come out on top in everything he does, including stabbing Edward in the eye and working with the Dauntless leaders when they help Erudite try to destroy Abnegation. Peter transferred to the Dauntless faction from Candor. Peter is often times shown as being a cruel, antagonistic, ill-tempered, and easily jealous person. Throughout the initiation process, he consistently mocks and taunts both Tris and her friends, and always seems to have one of his minions, Molly or Drew, by his side. Physically, he is strong and vicious. During the first stage of the initiation, he usually placed second to Edward in all of the initiation fights. He frequently came in second place before Edward left the faction (after being attacked by Peter, mind you), and he looked promising to remain in first place until Tris began to get better. When initiation is complete, Peter is in second after Tris.
Eric
Eric transferred to Dauntless from Erudite when he was sixteen; he was in the same initiate class as Four, quickly becoming one of his biggest rivals. He has a lot of animosity towards Four, resentful that a “Stiff” beat him in the final rankings; much like Peter and Tris, Eric came in second place to Four. When he was 17, Eric became a Dauntless leader; while it is extremely young in comparison to the leaders in the other factions, his age isn’t unusual for someone in Dauntlesss. When it comes to the training during Tris’ initiation, he was extremely harsh on the initiates, even going so far as to force Christina to hang over the railing above the Chasm for five minutes as a punishment for conceding in a fight. He is cruel and stresses using cutthroat strength and actions over intelligence and teamwork, seen when he chooses a team built for brute strength and power against Four’s faster, more intelligent team while they were playing Capture the Flag.
Marcus Eaton
Marcus Eaton is a member of the Abnegation political council with Andrew Prior; he is the person that Andrew answers to.
Marcus is probably the one person in Tobias’ life who did the most damage, though it could be debatable that his mother hurt him just as much. Marcus Eaton is the father of Tobias (‘Four’). He was heavily abusive of both his wife and his son. Tobias’ mother, Evelyn, died when he was just a child which left him alone with his father, and the abuse only seemed to get worse. On the outside, Marcus acts like the epitome of a good Abnegation member. While he acts virtuously among the community, he is actually cold, calculating, and incredibly deceptive. The extreme abuse Tobias suffered at the hands of his father is the sole reason that Tobias transferred from Abnegation to Dauntless. Marcus is also one of the reasons that Tobias never wanted to take a higher position of leadership in the Dauntless faction; he did not want to have to see or speak to his father at city council meetings.
Jeanine Matthews
Jeanine Matthews is another villain that we love to hate. While Peter is the leading antagonist of Tris for a majority of the novel, Jeanine is the true threat behind the scenes. Jeanine is the one who is spear-heading the ruthless hunt for the Divergents and trying to destroy the Abnegation faction; she was the one who developed the mind-control serum that Erudite uses on the members of Dauntless to destroy the Abnegation faction. Jeanine was selected as the leader of the Erudite faction solely based on her IQ score; she is described as having such an extreme intelligence that it is able to be perceived just by looking at her. She is also noted to be a bit snobbish and extremely arrogant; admittedly, though, she is willing to give in if she believes the opposing side is correct. The actress who portrayed her in the films described Jeanine as “the female Hitler”. In the novels, Tris describes her as being “more machine than maniac. She sees problems and forms solutions based on the data she has collected”.
The Novelization
Just A Note: I won't lie; this lesson is probably going to be one of the longer one as I have recently started rereading the Divergent novels, and it's one of my favorites. I'm skipping over some smaller details, but to be honest it's a little hard because everything seems important to me.
Another Note:There are certain events in this story which will deal with possibly triggering subjects such as suicide. I will place several ***'s before mentioning it so please skip over it if you are uncomfortable.
Our story starts with a young Beatrice Prior, she’s a sixteen-year-old member of Abnegation preparing for both her aptitude test and the following Choosing Ceremony. Her brother Caleb, who is about ten or eleven months older than Beatrice, is also going to be taking the aptitude test; given the fact that Tris and Caleb were both sixteen at the time of the Choosing Ceremony, it is likely that Caleb turned sixteen shortly after the previous year's Choosing Ceremony took place, so he chose his faction alongside Tris just after her sixteenth birthday and before his seventeenth. Everyone’s aptitude test is different, but we do get to see a vivid description of Beatrice’s test. Her test is administered by a Dauntless woman named Tori, who gives her a serum that begins a series of virtual reality simulations that Beatrice must react to. Tori gives Beatrice a vial of liquid, and when she wakes up, she realizes that she’s in the empty school cafeteria. A disembodied voice demands that she choose between two baskets on the table; one of the baskets contains a chunk of cheese, the other contains a knife “the length of [her] forearm”. When Beatrice hesitates and questions the choice, even stubbornly refusing to make a choice when the voice yells at her, the baskets disappear, and an angry dog enters the room, ready to attack. After a brief internal conflict about what she should do, she remembers reading that looking in a dog’s eyes is a sign of aggression, so she makes the only choice she thinks will help her. She lies down, face first. The next moment, the dog is licking her face with a friendly demeanor. She blinks and a little girl appears in the room, and the dog prepares to pounce on her. Instinctively, Beatrice tackles the dog, and suddenly things change again. She finds herself back in the mirrored room where her test is being given, but things are different; she can no longer see herself in the mirror’s reflections and she’s alone. When she tries to leave the room, instead of being in a hallway, she finds herself on a bus. She sees a man with burn scars holding a newspaper, and upon seeing her he asks whether she knows the murderer on the front page. While the man looks vaguely familiar to her, Beatrice can tell that answering him with any hint of positivity would be dangerous, so instead she insists that she doesn’t know him. The scarred man viciously accuses Beatrice of lying, declaring that she could save him if she confessed, but she holds fast to her resolution and insists she doesn’t know him.
Beatrice suddenly wakes up in the testing room again, but this time Tori is there; her attitude from before – merely brushing off the Abnegation because of their ‘Stiff’ nature – has completely changed, though. Now, she looks worried. She leaves for a few moments before coming back into the room with a tense and mildly worried demeanor. She then explains that Beatrice shows aptitude for not one, but three different factions: Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite; she also quietly (as if she’s worried she’s being overheard) explains that this inconclusive test result means she is something called Divergent. Tori warns Beatrice to never tell anyone of her results. Ever. It would be too dangerous for her to do so; it is extremely dangerous to be Divergent, especially now. The following day at the Choosing Ceremony, Beatrice is conflicted while waiting for her named to be called; her mom tells her she will love her no matter what she chooses, but her father is certain his family has nothing to worry about. The real shock to the family, though, comes when Beatrice’s brother chooses to transfer to the Erudite faction; no one had ever worried about Caleb. If anyone belonged in Abnegation, with the selfless and humble, it was her brother – the epitome of the Abnegation faction. The Erudite look smug in response – Abnegation and Erudite being in the midst of a sort of political struggle, either way they’re enemies – while most of Abnegation looks shocked and tries to hide their outrage. Beatrice struggles with her decision as she makes her way towards the choosing area – five bowls in the middle of the room; the Abnegation has stones in it, the Erudite has water, the Dauntless has hot coal, the Amity has soil, and the Candor have glass. The teen choosing their faction will cut their hand with a knife, then hold it over their chosen faction and let their blood drip onto it. Beatrice feels torn as she looks between the Dauntless and Abnegation bowls. She feels as if now she has to choose Abnegation, but at the same time she doesn’t feel selfless enough to fit in to her own faction. In the end, she holds her hand over the hot coals and the city’s leader announces her decision to the hall: she has chosen Dauntless.
After she jumps, Beatrice lands in a large net seven stories below; a boy – whose name is revealed to be Four – helps her out of the net and asks her what her name is. Beatrice pauses for a moment; her own name no longer feels right. Four tells her to think about it, as she only gets to choose once, and Beatrice decides to change her name. New place, new name. Here she can remake herself. She declares herself to be Tris, and Four announces who she is to the rest of the small crowd that had gathered to see the new initiates; most of them seemed impressed that an Abnegation had been the first to jump. In this portion of the initiation, all of the initiates make it through. Despite making friends from both Candor and Erudite – Christina, Al, and Will – Tris also manages to make some enemies from the Candor transfers – a sharp-tongued boy named Peter and his two lackeys (for a lack of a better description) Drew and Molly. The easy part of the Dauntless initiation is over; they soon learn that the real initiation into their faction involves three stages, and they will be scored and ranked in each stage. The Dauntless-born and the Transfers are kept separated in the first stage of the competition, but all of the initiates will be scored and ranked together.
The Dauntless-born and the Transfers are kept separated in the first stage of the training, but all of the initiates will be scored and ranked together; the older boy who helped her out of the net the previous day, Four, is the one who will be leading the training for the Dauntless-transfer initiates as he was a transfer himself. After the first stage, four initiates will be cut from the competition, and after the final test, only ten initiates will be chosen to stay. The rest will fail out and become factionless. The factionless are those who do not have a chosen faction, and are forced to live on the streets of the city; they are the ones who “failed to complete initiation into whatever faction they chose, they live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses. In return for their work they get food and clothing, but, as [Tris’] mother says, not enough of either” (25). On the first day of training, Tris and the other initiates learn more about the three stages of their training; the process will be divided into three stages that will test their strength: physical, emotional, and mental. Four then goes on to explain that he’ll be teaching the initiates how to shoot a gun and win a fight; Peter indignantly questions how exactly shooting a gun could be considered brave, and Four’s only response is to hold a gun to his head and inform him that you are more likely to handle yourself adeptly if you are prepared for the fight. While Tris is initially unable to shoot the target, she begins to improve after being goaded on by one of her fellow initiates, Will; she is a quick study and easily learns that she enjoys the sense of control the gun gives her. That night, one of the other initiates announces that he wants to get a tattoo, and Christina and Tris decide to join him; Christina even goes so far as to give Tris a small makeover, putting her into a more form-fitting dress and putting some make up on her, giving her a more striking appearance. When the group gets to the tattoo parlor, Tris is surprised to see Tori working there; she hadn’t seen the older woman since her aptitude test and hadn’t expected to see her again. She tries to talk to Tori about her test results, but when Tori refuses because it isn’t safe to do so, the older woman offers to give Tris a tattoo instead. Tris agreed to this and chose to get a tattoo of three flying ravens across her collarbone in honor of her three family members.
The next day the initiates are paired off, training to fight one another in hand-to-hand combat. Some of the initiates are hesitant to fight one another, and Four tells them that it is okay to concede, though Eric – one of the more ruthless Dauntless leaders – declares that they must fight until one of the two can no longer do so. This is a much more brutal style of fighting that was in place when Four and Eric were both initiates. A few initiates follow through with these rules, but when Christina concedes her fight to Molly, Eric brings everyone to the Pit (a large underground cavern with a glass roof that houses places for random activities; it is the heart of the Dauntless compound). He takes the group over to the Chasm (a stories-high ravine filled with rapidly running water and sharp rocks), and – angry with Christina for conceding – forces her to hang over the side of the railing for five minutes to prove to him and the rest of the initiates that she’s not a coward; she slips more than a few times and comes close to falling, but with Tris and Al cheering her on from the side she makes it all the way through, and the other two initiates rush to pull her back up. After more hand-to-hand training, Tris soon begins to have doubts about her place in Dauntless, especially after learning about Dauntless jobs. Later one night, though, after leading her team to victory during a game of Capture the Flag in a Navy Pier, she starts to regain her confidence while simultaneously impressing Four and angering Eric even further. This is also about the time that the relationship between Four and Tris starts to develop more; it’s one of the first real conversations they have – even if it’s a little short, the chemistry is clearly there. Despite having angered Eric the night before (it was his team that lost capture the flag because of her), Tris manages to earn his respect when she volunteers to take a punishment that was meant for Al after his poor performance in a knife-throwing exercise. When Visiting Day arrives, and family members are allowed to visit the initiates – even if they are from other factions – Eric advises the trainees not to get too attached to their families because the Dauntless strictly adhere to the “Faction before blood” belief system. When she gets to the Pit, Tris is both relieved and surprised to see her mother, though the older woman apologizes for her husband’s absence, surprising Tris even further when she admits that he’s been selfish lately; regardless of this, though, she is still surprised and very happy to see her mother as she hadn’t expected to see any of her family. It is during this time that Tris begins to suspect that her mother was a member of Dauntless at one time; she prompts Tris to go visit her brother in Erudite and tell him to research a simulation serum because the members of Abnegation have been prohibited from entering Erudite, meaning Natalie cannot visit her son. On this day, the first stage of their training is complete, and Tris is surprised to find herself in sixth place, higher than she thought she would be. Edward placed first, Peter in second, and Al was placed in eighth; Christina and Will are somewhere in the middle. This means that out of the people we know about in the training, only Al would have been cut from the training. Later that night, Tris is woken from her sleep by the sounds of someone screaming. When the lights are turned on, she finds Edward with a butter knife sticking out of his eye. While Tris calms him down as she’s waiting for help, she notices that both Peter and Drew are missing from the group; it is pretty clear that the two of them did it, but she doesn’t tell anyone. The following day, Tris learns that Edward chose to leave Dauntless and become factionless because he wouldn’t be able to finish the Dauntless training; his girlfriend, Maya, also left with him. These two initiates leaving saves Al from being cut.
As stages two and three of initiation commence, Tris finally starts to feel at home and really find herself in Dauntless at last. When a Dauntless-born initiate named Uriah (who was also on her team in Capture the Flag) invites her to go with a group of the Dauntless-born on an initiation ritual, Tris agrees to go with him, feeling flattered at being invited and excited when she hears the dangerous aspect of the initiation ritual. They all get onto a train, travel to Michigan Avenue, and then up 100 floors of the Hancock building. Tris is simultaneously terrified and thrilled when she learns that the ritual involves getting into a body harness and zip lining down a cable across the city. She absolutely loves the thrill of the adventure and feels a sense of pride when another Dauntless-born initiate remarks that they can’t call her ‘Stiff’ anymore; it should be noted that she was the only faction-transfer to be invited, and even Christina can’t hide her jealousy.
During the second stage of initiation, all of the initiates are injected with a fear serum that only Dauntless uses (each faction has their own serum – memory, death, peace, truth, and fear) in order to induce a fear simulation in the initiates. After Tris’s first simulation, Four informs her that despite how shaken up she was after the simulation, she was able to escape three times faster than anyone else; he also admits that six years before, the Dauntless leaders changed the training to be more ruthless, and he has refused every single leadership position that they offer him because of it. Regardless of the comfort from Four, Tris still feels an almost overwhelming amount of stress from the tests as well as anger and frustration with Peter and Molly; Peter has been distributing Erudite reports that accuse Abnegation of corruption while Molly lied to a reporter, stating that Tris talks in her sleep and reveals her father did horrible things to her; Tris even tried to attack Peter and Molly because of it, but Will pulled her from the room. They have a short argument, but Christina and Al distract her by inviting her and Will to go with them to the tattoo parlor once more. After another trip to the tattoo parlor and a bit of shopping, the four of them are heading to dinner when a drunken Four stops Tris near the Chasm and idly flirts with her; it makes her heart skip a beat, and the others seem to notice the effect their instructor has on her; they tease her a little, but it’s not malicious in the same way that Peter does.
During her next simulation, Tris manages to escape the hallucination once more when she manipulates the simulation by reminding herself that it is all in her head; this simple action leads Four to realize that Tris is Divergent. Much like Tori, Four sharply advises her not to share this status with anyone; it is highly dangerous, especially around the Dauntless compound. He warns her to figure out how to hide her divergence in the simulations if she doesn’t want to find herself at the bottom of the Chasm. Again, Tris goes to the tattoo parlor so that she can talk to Tori; she needs to talk to someone who has answers about the Divergence. It is Tori who informs Tris just how dangerous being Divergent in the Dauntless faction is.
“The Dauntless leaders don’t know about you yet. I deleted your aptitude results from the system immediately and manually logged your result as Abnegation. But make no mistake—if they discover what you are, they will kill you.” (257-258)
Tori goes on to explain that all Divergents seem to have the ability to manipulate the simulations; this is what gives their divergence away. She tells Tris that her brother was able to manipulate the tests, and when the Dauntless leaders discovered it they threw him into the chasm, and then they made it look like he’d jumped into the chasm on his own. She isn’t sure why exactly the Dauntless care about the abilities of Divergents, but again warns Tris to be careful.
To her surprise, when Eric announces the ranking results after the second stage, Tris is ranked in the first place. Peter is in second, Christina in seventh, Will in ninth, and Al is last. Predictably, this leads Peter to threaten her. Much to her dismay, her friends are also resentful; they even go so far as to suggest she was manipulating them to think that she was weak so she could do better than them. Al is particularly upset, bursting in to tears before asking to be left alone. Tris leaves, angry and unsure of what to do – questioning if the friends she thought she had were really that. Soon, she finds solace in her Dauntless-born friends, Uriah, Lynn, and Marlene; she also shares a brief, yet significant moment with Four. Later that night, unable to sleep, Tris gets up to get a drink of water. While doing so, she overhears Eric talking with an unknown woman about the Divergent rebels; she also learns that this woman is the one who put Eric in charge in the Dauntless faction – or rather, she instructed Max to put Eric into a leadership position. Suddenly, she’s grabbed from behind and forcibly restrained, and together the three boys drag her to the chasm. She quickly realizes one of the boys is Peter, and while she’s mildly terrified of what will happen she’s also not surprised; that means the second is Drew. The hurt and surprise comes when she realizes the third boy is Al. After punching and kicking her multiple times, Peter lifts her up and over the rail to drop her into the chasm. Just as he nearly drops her into the chasm below, they all hear shouts in the distance. Peter drops her, but Tris catches herself on the rail and clings on to the metal in the midst of shouts and fighting in the distance. When she tries to see what’s going on, all she can clearly make out are Four’s dark, blue eyes. A short while later, he pulls her up off the railing, and she passes out in his arms. Refusing to take her back to the Dauntless room that night, Four takes her back to his own private room so she can recover from the assault. As she recovers, he advises her to feign weakness not only to stay safe, but also to gain herself protection from her fellow transfers, and the two of them grow even closer; she ends up spending the night in his room, taking his bed at his insistence while he sleeps on the floor.
The following day, Four explains to the transfers that the third stage of the training is still a fear simulation, but this one is known as a fear landscape. The initiates will be presented with many simulated obstacles that will be based on the fears uncovered in their initial simulations as well as new fears thrown in; the main difference between these simulations and the ones in the second stage are that everyone will be aware that they’re in a simulation in the fear landscapes. The third stage combines the tactics learned in in the first two stages; they will have to utilize the physical skills they learned in the first stage while simultaneously controlling their emotions like they did (for the most part) in the second stage; the goal is for them to keep a level head in a highly stressful situation, a key trait those in Dauntless need to master. This stage is a little easier for hiding Tris’ adeptness at quickly getting through the simulations. The final test will involve the initiates having to face their fears in front of a small panel of Dauntless leaders; the results will again be timed, and those results will weigh heavily in their final rankings. When they get back to the dormitory, the small group (Will, Christina, and Tris) finds Al in the room; he’s been crying. He repeatedly tries to apologize to Tris for his actions the night before, but she refuses to accept his apologies. Instead, she tells him that if he ever comes near her again, she will kill him. ***** A few hours later, Christina wakes Tris up in the middle of a nightmare she is having (something that has become quite frequent in her life), and tells her that something happened to Al. They gather with other members of Dauntless in the Pit, and they soon discover that Al had committed suicide by jumping into the chasm. During his funeral, Eric exclaims that Al is courageous for leaping into the unknown; this exclamation angers Tris so much that she storms away from the ceremony, though Four soon finds her in a hallway. She vents to him her frustrations with Dauntless’ idealization of suicide:
“He wasn’t brave! He was depressed and a coward and he almost killed me! Is that the kind of thing we respect here?”
“What do you want them to do?” he says. “Condemn him? Al’s already dead. He can’t hear it and it’s too late.”
“It’s not about Al,” I snap. “It’s about everyone watching! Everyone who now sees hurling themselves into the chasm as a viable option. I mean, why not do it if everyone calls you a hero afterward? Why not do it if everyone will remember your name? It’s...I can’t...” (309-310)
Believing pride to be every Dauntless’ largest flaw, the two continue to argue for a short while before Four warns her that people are watching them and pulls her further down another hallway, away from the surveillance camera above a nearby fountain. He warns her that the Dauntless leaders are watching her in particular, but he also confesses that he believes she’s being bravest when she’s behaving unselfishly, like when she protected Al during the knife-throwing training. The Dauntless care more about controlling how she thinks than how she acts; if she thinks like an Abnegation later on down the line, the Dauntless leaders believe that could be dangerous. He tells her that the way she responds to fear impresses him; it doesn’t shut her down. It wakes her up. They share an even more intimate moment than before, simply standing in each other’s arms with his lips pressed against her forehead.
The next day, Tris goes to the tattoo parlor with Will and Christina where she gets another tattoo – the faction symbol for Abnegation – and has a brief conversation with Will about Jeanine Matthews, the leader of Erudite; she worries that the woman is trying to start some kind of revolution. Soon enough Christina and Will leave together, and shortly after she notices Four heading towards the fear landscape room so she follows him. Knowing that she followed him, he explains that he sometimes goes to practice facing his phobias there, and then he invites her into his simulation, saying it will explain why they call him Four. Two of the simulations reveal two of ‘his fears – heights and small spaces. The third scenario confuses Tris a little, as it consists of Four being forced to kill a woman who is pointing a gun at him and she’s not sure why he seems so dazed afterward, but she helps him move on to the last fear. The last fear reveals to her Four’s true identity. He comes face-to-face with a tall, slim man who is carrying a long belt in his fist. Tris instantly recognizes him as Marcus Eaton, her father’s colleague and the leader of the Abnegation faction. She remembers that Marcus Eaton had a son who, two years prior, had transferred from Abnegation to Dauntless; Erudite had accused him of cruelty towards his son, and Tris realizes with shock that they finally got something right. She realizes that Four is Marcus’ son, Tobias. Marcus suddenly multiplies into a dozen men, telling Tobias “this is for your own good”, and when he lifts his arm to beat Tobias with the belt, Tris intervenes. Tobias quickly steps between them as the simulation lashes out towards Tris, and the scene then vanishes. As they recover from the simulation, the realization of Tobias’ nickname hits Tris – he only has four fears. They embrace for a moment, sharing another intimate moment, before Tobias takes her hand, telling her that he has something else to show her. Together they walk hand-in-hand towards the Pit, with Four carefully leading Tris down a narrow path beside the Pit leading down towards the bottom of the chasm; Tris notices that he seems practiced and familiar with this path. They have a deep conversation where they learn more about each other – or, rather, Tris learns more about Tobias – and it ends with the two of them sharing their first kiss. From this point forward, they officially begin a secret relationship.
The next day, Tris has almost the epitome of the ultimate bad day in training. The day starts with Four ignoring her, which throws her off a bit until Uriah tells her that his older brother told him they were going through one of the instructor’s fear landscapes that day; she knows Four would never let anyone see his abuse, so she’s not surprised when Lauren, a Dauntless-born instructor, tells them that they will be experiencing one of her fears. The devastating part for Tris is when she’s assigned Lauren’s fear of being kidnapped, and she’s forced to relive the trauma of Peter’s attack on her. Soon, a voice tells Lauren to stop the simulation, and when the hallucination finally stops Tris is in tears. Tobias publicly reprimands her for such a ‘pathetic’ performance in the simulation which angers Tris so much that she slaps him and storms from the room. Instead of sticking around, she breaks the rules and leaves the Dauntless compound on her own without telling anyone and without any kind of supervision. Deciding to following through with her mother’s wishes, she travels to the Erudite compound to talk to Caleb; it’s the first time she has seen him since the Choosing Ceremony. She finds Caleb easily enough, and together they go to a nearby park so they might have a private conversation. Caleb tells her that he believes Erudite are planning something terrible, but he’s not sure about who he should trust; this revelation and hesitation is like a slap in the face to Tris and their old faction. Angry and frustrated with her brother, she begins to leave but first gives Caleb their mother’s instructions to research the simulation serum.
As she goes to leave, she has a confrontation with Jeanine; Tris instantly recognizes Jeanine’s voice from the night she overheard Eric talking to someone about ‘Divergent rebels’. After a probing conversation with the Erudite leader, Tris begins to suspect that Jeanine is machinating to kill the Divergent in the city with the help of the Dauntless faction. When she finally returns to Dauntless, Tobias takes Tris across the city and shows her the lights in the Erudite compound are on, which violates the rules. He then warns her that the Erudite faction is planning a war against Abnegation, he found the plans in the computer files (he works in the control room), and they plan to use Dauntless as their soldiers. Tris had started to figure this out on her own, but he only confirmed her suspicions. Now the only question left was how they were going to get the Dauntless to do what they want.
Initiation day finally comes around, and Tris is put through her final assessment. Her simulation contains each one of her fears – surprisingly she only has seven – which she must confront head on, one after another. The speed of which she got through her assessment combined with the fact that she had so few fears puts her in first place. After becoming an official member of Dauntless, Eric congratulates her before telling her that all Dauntless members must be fitted with a tracking device, and while she is suspicious of him and this only furthers her suspicion that he’s working with Jeanine, she complies and allows him to inject her with the tracking serum; it is only later on that she realizes the tracking serum was actually a simulation serum. Later in the day, Tris talks to Tobias about one of her fears – one that involved him personally – and he helped her to overcome the fear that he was only using her for her body. They humorously discuss the fact that she now only has six fears, and people are going to start calling her ‘Six’ in the same manner they call him ‘Four’. Later that night, at the initiation dinner, Tris learns that not only did she make it into the faction, but so did Uriah, Lynne, Marlene, Will, and Christina. Peter also made it into the faction, much to her dismay, but both Drew and Molly failed to pass the initiation tests. All of Dauntless celebrates together, and Tris publicly kisses Tobias – no longer caring about keeping their relationship a secret – and this action shocks Will and Christina (who had also been dating), though they’re supportive.
That evening, the members of Dauntless wake up in a sleepwalking-like trance. All except Tris who is able to resist the simulation serum because of her Divergence. She wakes up at one point and finds Christina and the other initiates leaving the dorm, all of them in a trance as they leave. Despite not being under the serum’s control, Tris joins the crowd, blending in the best she can as they head toward the Pit. Once in the Pit, the Dauntless members pick up guns and holsters from piles waiting for them. Tris quickly comes to the decision that she would rather die than fight against the members of Abnegation and her family; she resolves to protect her family from the coming onslaught. She follows the Dauntless onto a train, and she fears that Tobias has fallen victim to the serum when he helps her aboard, but feels relief flood through her after he squeezes her hand. He is Divergent.
When the train carrying the Dauntless finally arrives at the Abnegation compound, Tobias tries to get Tris to run, but she refuses and stays in the crowd, moving through streets of Abnegation in search of her family. Suddenly, she watches in horror as the Dauntless begin to shoot every Abnegation member that they see. Eric suddenly appears, and as he prepares to shoot and kill Tobias, Tris breaks her cover, shooting him in the foot before he can get a shot off. The two try to run away, but Tris gets shot in the shoulder and they are forced to surrender because of how much blood Tris is losing. The two of them are taken to Jeanine who is in the Abnegation headquarters, and there Jeanine expresses surprise at Tobias’ Divergence; she had always suspected Tris, but never Tobias. He sarcastically tells her to kill them, but she refuses saying that she needs them both alive for more tests; she has developed a new serum that will work on the Divergents. She also notes that she wants to learn why it seems that most Divergents seem to come from Abnegation. Regardless, Jeanine wants to try the new serum out on Tobias first, and Tris will be executed as soon as their meeting is over. Tobias lunges at Jeanine, but the guards stop him, injecting him with the new serum instead. The new serum alters Tobias’ surroundings and make Tris appear to be an enemy; this time, Tobias attacks Tris, trying to choke her. The guards manage to pull him off of her, and he is sent to monitor the control room. Tris is knocked unconscious and then taken away. When she finally comes to, though weak from loss of blood, Tris finds herself in a large glass tank that is starting to fill with water. This isn’t a simulation. Jeanine intends to drown her. As she prepares herself to die, on the verge of drowning, her mother Natalie suddenly appears and rescues her just in time and takes Tris to her brother and father. Natalie helps Tris escape, and in this process Tris learns that her mother was also Divergent, and even with conditioning from their faction, their thoughts cannot be controlled. When Tris gets to the safety of the place her family is hiding, she collapses from the loss of blood, and her father and brother extract the bullet and clean her wound, while Caleb explains he quit the initiation after reaching the serum and discovering Erudite’s plans. Tris then explains what is going on with the serum and the Dauntless army being controlled by Erudite. Tris soon realizes that the only way to stop the killing is to stop the simulation entirely, and the shock on Marcus’ face at all of the new information helps Tris figure out that the Erudite must be using the computers at the Dauntless headquarters to control the army. She suggests that they go to the Dauntless compound to destroy the program and is mildly surprised when they all agree to go with her. Together, they head to the Dauntless compound. As they make their way towards the compound, Marcus makes a remark about how Tris must regret joining Dauntless, but she sternly rejects his theory, saying that it was Dauntless who taught her how to be selfless, not Abnegation. Once they get close enough to the rooftop entrance, Tris shows them how to get off of the train and then into the Dauntless compound. They make their way into the Pit, encountering Peter along the way; Tris is surprised to find him awake, but regardless she overpowers him, shoots him in the arm, and then forces him to lead them to the Dauntless’ control room.
Once she gets to the room, Tris finds Tobias at the controls of the simulation room which is filled with computer monitors, still under the influence of the new serum. He is confused at her presence, but pulls a gun on her and orders her to drop her gun. She does what he tells her to, but tackles him before he can shoot her. They struggle for control of his weapon, and Tris eventually gains the upper hand. She doesn’t want to shoot him, though, and begs him to recognize her, to remember who she is. When that doesn’t work, she is reminded of the lessons of bravery and selflessness that she learned; trusting that her plan will work, she gives Tobias the gun. He aims the gun at her head while she places her hand on his chest, and when he doesn’t immediately shoot her, she pulls him closer to her and holds him tight, speaking to him again, still begging him to realize it’s her. In one sudden move, Tobias pushes her back, and for a moment she believes he’s going to kill her, but then she realizes he’s broken through the trance. They have a tearful reunion, and when Tris asks how he broke through, he simply explains that he heard her voice. Tobias stops the computer program, ending the Dauntless simulations and initiating chaos among the faction out in the city; before they leave, they take the computer’s hard drive with them so that the Erudite won’t be able to start the program again.
As they leave the control room, Tobias is forced to come face to face with his father for the first time since he left the faction. Things are tense, but Tris harshly tells Marcus to stay away from him. Together, the survivors (not everyone survived these last few chapters, but I’m not spoiling that one) hop onto the train, heading out of the city and towards the Amity headquarters where they are sure they will find peace and amnesty, even if only for a little while. While on the train, Tobias confesses to Tris that he loves her, though Tris doesn’t say it back (not yet), and they share a long kiss – one that Tris humorously notes is longer than it should be considering how close they’re standing to her brother. In the end, she can’t bring herself to care, though. As they get closer to the Amity headquarters, Tris turns her attention to the hard drive in her hand, silently studying it; when she notices that Marcus is eyeing the hard drive as well with a greedy look in his eyes, she realizes that they still aren’t entirely safe. Not yet. As she settles against Tobias’ shoulder, trying to finally sleep as they ride towards the temporary safety that Amity offers, she realizes they’ve all become factionless and idly wonders what will happen next.
The Film
The novel was adapted for the silver screen and released on March 21, 2014. It stars Shailene Woodley as Tris Prior and Theo James as Tobias Eaton. It also stars Ansel Elgort as Caleb Prior, Zoë Kravitz as Christina, Maggie Q as Tori Wu, Jai Courtney as Eric, Miles Teller as Peter Hayes, Ashley Judd as Natalie Prior, and Kate Winslet as Jeanine Matthews. The film was directed by Neil Burger, produced by Lucy Fisher, Pouya Shabazian, and Douglas Wick, and the screenplay was written by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor. After its release, the film received mixed reviews; it was given praise for its concepts and action, but criticized for its execution. Despite some of the more negative reviews of the film, it was a financial success. During its opening weekend, the film earned the number one spot at the box office, and after its release it garnished over $288 million worldwide in comparison to its $85 million budget. Despite the success of the first film, the two sequels did not do quite so well. The second installment wasn't bad, it just didn't stick as closely to the book as fans believed it should have. The third film? Well...we're just...we're not going to talk about the third film. We're going to just pretend it didn't happen. Let's just say, it was supposed to be a two-part finale film (like they had in The Hunger Games and Harry Potter), but the first film did so badly that the second part was scrapped; it has been decided that it will be made into a tv-movie, but almost none of the original cast are coming back for it so...that should be interesting.
Anyway, the first film stuck pretty close to the book for the most part. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't too bad. Given how long this lesson is (don't look at me like that, I told you it would be long... ), you can find a list of the novel-to-film differences here.