SCRIPT

The faction system is a living being composed of cells, all of you. And the only
way it can survive and thrive is for each of you to claim your rightful place. The
future belongs to those who know where they belong. Faction before blood.

[1]

Good day, everyone. I am Thea and being part of the book parade, I will now provide
the book review for the 2014's one of the best selling book, The Divergent by
Veronica Roth. Come to the adventure with me on how this book could be a
manifestation of the skills that we need in today's 21st century.

[2]

Starting off with the author and co-producer of the film adaptation of the book,
Veronica Roth.

Veronica Roth was born in New York on August 19, 1988. Her parents divorced when
she was five years old, and she describes herself as a serious and intense child.
After the divorce, Roth lived with her mother, a painter who read to Roth every
night and told her that boredom was prohibited. She credits this creative
environment with encouraging her to create her own worlds and scenarios. As Roth
grew older, she began writing, which eventually lead her to pursue a creative
writing degree at Northwestern University. In 2011, she married Nelson Fitch, a
photographer from Chicago. Her connection to the Chicago area led her to set
Divergent in a futuristic version of the Midwestern city.

[3]

Moving forward to the overview of the Divergent and to give you a glimpse, the
story is all about a world where the population is divided into factions by
personality types; Dauntless, Erudite, Amity, Candor and Abnegation. These factions
will be thoroughly explain later on. The protagonist, Tris Prior is classified as
Divergent. When she uncovers a conspiracy to eliminate all Divergents, she teams
with the mysterious man named Four to find out what makes the powers-that-be so
frightened of them.

(EXPLANATION OF THE AUTHOR'S IMPARTED QUOTABLE QUOTES)

The explanation on why the author come up with this kind of story is actually based
from her experience. Veronica Roth was enrolled in psychology classes when she
conceived the idea for Divergent. In these courses, she learned about exposure
therapy, a phobia treatment that requires repeatedly confronting one’s fears, and
the infamous 1961 Milgram experiment that tested people’s obedience to authority
figures. The influence of these studies is evident in Divergent’s emphasis on
personality traits, phobias, and rankings and hierarchies. The author’s own
personality also affected her decision to make Tris, the book’s protagonist, into
something of a daredevil.

When Veronica Roth first started Divergent, she intended to write about her idea of
a utopia. However, she soon realized a world in which everyone strives to be
perfect could actually be a troubling, even horrible place. The book thus turned
into a dystopian novel, a popular genre in contemporary young adult literature.

[12]
(REACTIONS ON THE DIFFERENT COPING SKILLS TO SURVIVE IN THE GLOBAL VILLAGE)

From the factions of the book, where do you think you belong? Or, are you not sure
enough that probably, you embody two or more qualities that will make you a
Divergent, as well as, dangerous?

For me, this kind of coping skills or strategy to survive in a society doesn't
really guarantee to have an utopia kind of government because our natural human
instinct or how we are programmed as a living organism does not limit us to have
only one characteristic. We are not only born to be intelligent, only to be honest,
and a lot more, and that's what make us different to other living things. It's
because we could attain a diverse personalities and attitudes and having those
qualities does not necessarily make us dangerous. An individual is only dangerous
if he or she is a threat to someone who wanted to control or to be superior to
them.

[13]

Let us now move forward to the skills we need in today's 21st century that we could
acquire from the book. I have 3 themes as well as how we could apply them or
examples in real life.

[14]

The first theme is the complexity of identity. The increasing tension suggests that
the roles created by the founders were too simplistic and not responsive to the
changing needs of a dynamic society. By forcing every person into factions focused
on a single personality trait, the government discourages the personal growth that
normally takes place throughout a person’s life. For everyone in Tris’s society,
identity is locked in at age sixteen and never allowed to change. Tris thinks she
has to choose whether to be brave or selfless, because neither the Choosing
Ceremony nor faction system acknowledges the possibility that she may be both.
Although she initially thinks everyone else is happy to choose, and her discontent
makes her an outlier, she soon learns that others around her are also conflicted,
suggesting that the government’s attempts to quash individuality haven’t entirely
succeeded.

But identity isn't just about what's inside Tris— it's also about her relationships
with family and friends and society in general. A big part of identity here is
figuring out where you fit in which is pretty hard for most young people. Instead
of being able to be happy in one of the factions, Tris's main identity is that
she's Divergent. That means that no matter how hard she tries, she's never going to
fit into her world.

[15]

So let me ask or somehow, ask yourself these questions. Is there anything in our
lives that matches up with the Choosing Ceremony? and how do people change their
outward identity?

For me, in the first question, I think the most accurate example for this is the
elections that we have here as a democratic country. We cannot deny that we are
somehow politically separated by the colors, just how the story are divided by
factions- the yellow, pinks, red and green, and others. But also, we cannot deny
that what color you support, also defines who you are. Like if you are from
Erudite, then you are an intelligent person. If you support the red and green,
well, reality check. See what's happening around you and compare how people are
living their life right after being dominated by that color. Aside from that, how
do people change their outward identity? Just like how Tris, born being Abnegation,
and chose to be Dauntless. If we are going to connect this on the example I gave
earlier, you could be blind from the political propaganda before and now, you chose
to support the basic human rights that are being exploited by the government and
how their selfishness could make us suffer.

Another example that we could have is when we choose a college course. If your
family is a blood of engineers and you wanted to be a doctor, but of course, your
family will insist you to be an engineer because that is like the established
tradition that your family have, will you choose what you wanted to be or how
people wanted you to be? Will you decide based on how you act with the people
around you or how people think of you?

[16]

Next theme is the relationship between selflessness and bravery. If Tris’s father
made her think selflessness and bravery were incompatible, her mother’s actions
have the opposite effect. On Visiting Day, Tris realizes that her mother grew up in
Dauntless, making her exactly the kind of person Tris wants to be: responsible,
loving, and generous, but intelligent and brave when necessary. Her mother becomes
the perfect embodiment of selfless courage.

Do you think true courage is to leave your fear behind or you have to overcome
every time?

[17]

So, how are we going to apply this in our current generation? Eventually Tris comes
to realize that bravery isn't about getting tattoos—it's about standing up for what
she believes in: "ordinary acts of bravery" (16.136). Going back to the question I
had earlier, Do you think true courage is to leave your fear behind or you have to
overcome every time? Are fears more useful than dangerous?

[18]

Last theme we have is about Choices. Here are some statement that I want to focus
on. The tagline of the book says, One Choice Can Transform You while the slogan of
the film, What Makes You Different, Makes You Dangerous.

[19]

It's okay to make a wrong choice in Divergent because every mistake is a learning
experience that will help the character the next time. The only characters who
succeed in this book are those who contemplate all the options and choose among
them. Anyone doing things by habit or without thought, ends up making a mess. That
is why, being impulsive is not really a great thing at all times, even impulsive
shopping. I also believe that we are only one choice away from a different life
that we could have. We also have to consider the external factors that could affect
the choices in our life, even our very own family. So relating to the prior theme,
selflessness and bravery, are you brave enough to get away from your family who are
no good to you or does not really nourish your capabilities as a person?

[20]

These kind of question will lead us to more complex questions. Are families more
positive or negative in our life? Are they the least people who would support our
choices? and how we deal with the dilemma that we have when we are not sure on the
choices that we make?
The way I do things is I tend to measure the prons and cons of a certain scenario.
I am selfless to people who are close to me but I am also selfish enough to
prioritize my well-being over other people. Families might not provide the overall
support that we need, such as the emotional, mental, psychological, due to
generational mindset that they can't seem to overcome with, but we all know that we
could get those kind of support to non-blood people, like our friends.

[21]

Now that we discussed the skills we could acquire from the book, I will now share
my opinions or insights about it by comparing to the one of the best selling book,
quite similar with the Divergent, which is the Hunger Games.

[22]

To have a general comparison between these two, Divergent has more freedom of
choice rather than Hunger Games. Hunger Games is a fight for resources to survive
while Divergent is a conflict on finding out who you really are with the fear of
being exposed as being different. The similarity that they have is they both have
terrible government and the citizens are being used to be controlled. We really
couldn't compare these two because despite of their similarities, they have their
own way of expressing their motive and intention behind the plot. But for me,
Divergent is quite closer to reality. We really don't have the freedom to be what
we wanted to be. There will be always a stereotype and discrimination for being
different. The gender, color of your skin, your social status- being different is
difficult. We always have this urge to blend in to prevent any conflict but we also
find ways on how are we going to show our true colors.

[23]

For the last part of our discussion, Divergent is a failed Utopia where each person
has to choose which faction they want to be a part of for the rest of their life.
Being different could lead to being disowned by the society. This could lead to
some people to rebel against the government that is controlling people. All of that
saying, we will always come to an end with a moral, make decisions for yourself.
But I also would like to add that we also have to be considerate because your own
decisions could affect other people. No man is an island. How you act and think
will always have an impact to people around you. Therefore, make decisions for
yourself respecting to the common good. That's all for my part for the book parade.