Divergent

Divergent

             Over the past two weeks, I have finished the book Divergent, by Veronica Roth, which had a really interesting and cool plot. The book is about a girl named Beatrice, who lives in a future society. The society is split into five factions: Erudite, who are known for their knowledge, Amity, who represent peace, Candor, who are always honest, Abnegation, who are always selfless, and Dauntless, who are brave. But recently, two factions, Erudite and Abnegation, are starting to have conflict between eachother. The reason is that Abnegation has always run the government but now Erudite wants to have control of it. So Erudite started attacking Abnegation by making false rumors and claims to make Abnegation look bad to all the other factions. However, everyone knows where they belong and what they are going to do, except for Beatrice. She was born in Abnegation but she never felt that she really belonged there. Since she is 16, her, her brother and all other teenagers who are 16 get to take the aptitude test, which tells them what faction they best fit into. No matter what the results say, they will get the chance to choose the faction they want to live in on Choosing Day.

            Beatrice had really strange results though. The aptitude test showed that she doesn't fit into just one faction; she fits into several. This means that she is divergent. The problem with this is that divergents, in this society, are extremely dangerous, because their minds work in different ways, and once the leaders find out, they are usually killed. From the test, Beatrice found out that she fits into Erudite, Abnegation and Dauntless. So she's really not sure what to pick in the Choosing Ceremony. While they're at the ceremony, she sees every 16 year old choose what faction they want to live in. Some leave their families behind and some stay with them. Her brother chooses Erudite, which shocks her and her parents, and Beatrice eventually chooses Dauntless. Right after the ceremony, she feels how the Dauntless are truly brave and sometimes crazy, when she and the new initiates had to jump on and off of a moving train and jump from a high story building onto a net to get into the dauntless compounds. In the compounds, she meets Four, who will be the trainer for her and the other initiates. She also makes some close friends and some enemies. Soon after joining Dauntless, Beatrice finds herself changing a lot. She changes her name to Tris, gets several tattoos, and becomes a lot more confident and impulsive. Throughout initiation, Tris and the other new members have to train to fight and face their worst fears. Because Tris is divergent, she is able to manipulate the simulation when facing her fears, making her a lot faster at getting through it then everyone else. Four discovers that Tris is divergent and she finds out that he is also divergent, but he hasn’t been caught by anyone. After initiation is over, the new members see their rankings and Tris is happy to find out that she got ranked first, meaning that she will get a good job in the future. But on that same day, every dauntless member was injected with a serum (made by Erudite) which made them basically like sleepwalkers. The serum controlled them and made them go to the Abnegation faction to kill the citizens. This was Erudite’s plan to overthrow Abnegation so they could run the government. But both Four (Tobias is his real name) and Tris are both immune to the serum because they are divergents. They shut down the program and the Dauntless members wake up. Now they are factionless. They don’t have any home, faction, or family.

             I really liked this book because of its action, suspense and romance. I saw the movie and I think I like the book better because it had more detail and a lot of parts were cut out in the movie. I like Roth’s style of writing because she doesn’t use too much of a high vocabulary and it is an easy read. I am very excited to read the second book, Insurgent.