Divergent is marketed as a Dystopia, but it seems to miss the fundamental part of dystopian literature, which is commentating on an aspect of society that could lead to it’s downfall. It’s supposed to be relevant to our current world to some extent. In The Handmaid’s Tale, misogyny/the dehumanization of women is talked about. In Hunger Games, it’s about our society’s love for violence and war/how easy it is to dehumanize people, which is relevant to today’s society. In 1984 it’s a lack of individual thought. What exactly is Divergent’s overarching message? How did we get to this world in which people are divided into 4 groups based on one personality trait?
Idk the series should’ve been marketed as maybe a fantasy or action but even then it misses the mark. It just seems very shallow. Like the characters are not well thought out at all, not even Tris and Tobias who are supposed to be since they’re divergent. The writing also isn’t great, it honestly just seems like the series was just a cash grab because YA dystopian literature was popular at the time
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Divergent was marketed as dystopian because it is one. It just also happens to be a poorly written book with very little substance.
Is a setting supposed to do a thing?
I don’t thinking so.
The best thing about Divergent was that >!the main character died at the end!<, which was a pretty bold move imo
I threw my book across the room. 😂
Yeah I actually respect the author for pulling that move, but then again she had to differentiate it between the 100 other dystopia YA hunger games knockoffs at the time
I read the first book and rated it 2⭐️. THG is my favorite series.
I dont see the parallèle with THG yall always make. Except for the fact the MC is a teen girl…
It’s because Divergent was the SECOND biggest YA Dystopia franchise at the time, which is why they’re compared so often. The difference in quality is staggering.
Ok but i still dont really understand how Divergent is a HG knock off… Is it bad ? Yes. But they have nothing in common except being the same genre i guess
Thats like saying Percy Jackson is a HP knock off because both are fantasy with boy MC
That’s the point I’m making- there were SO MANY dystopia genre YA books at the time that were riding off the wave that Hunger Games started, which is why it invites all the comparisons. Around a year after Mockingjay finished, Divergent was published and readers swarmed to it because it was the next biggest franchise in the genre.
I’ve only watched the films but presumed the message there was about not labelling and dividing people simplistically in the way that racism or other bigotry might do and that doing so leads to oppression and conflict?
This is that one time that the movie changes something and actually gives the story more depth than the original creation had intended
God I hated the movies and it’s changes “super divergent”?!?! Just to make sure our main character is extra extra special.
it honestly just seems like the series was just a cash grab because YA dystopian literature was popular at the time
That’s exactly it. It’s irrelevant, meaningless tripe that exists solely to ride the coattails of a shitty trend.
The Divergent series is sometimes credited for derailing the entire YA dystopian literature genre for its inanity. The truth is that it’s a crash grab, and the author did the bare minimum to cash in on the trend at the time.
I’ll just never forget how hard John Green plugged the books on his vlogs. Man really fooled me into thinking they were totally that good.
Did he know the author by any chance? Did they have the same publisher?
I never got the impression they were like friends or Mentor/Mentee; their books are published by two different publishers. It was part of why it felt so “cringe” to me. It very much felt like how influencers will give each other shout outs and act like besties or brand accounts will “fight” each other on twitter. In reality, its just marketing so they can generate hype and discourse; discourse makes hashtags trend.
Roths book was written in her Senior year at college and was published shortly after she graduated. I always assumed John Green basically super-hyping her book was an attempt to speedrun the marketing for this short order book that NEEDED to get out because lets face it, the dystopian YA bubble was already over-inflated by the time Divergent hit shelves.
I agree it’s trash. But I do recall later books expanding on it.
Basically, the four personalities came up because of deliberate genetic engineering. Humans discovered how to alter genes and went nuts with it. They began programming smart people for academia, brave people for the military, honest people to be politicians… etc.
…And this completely fucked up human’s gene pool over time.
And so the setting of the story is actually an elaborate social experiment to try and heal humanity’s genetic health.
It’s discovered later that there are actually a shitton tons of “Divergents”. The protagonist was not even close to being the only one. But they were told to keep it secret because of…reasons that I don’t remember.
So yeah. There’s… a theme in there somewhere? I think? Maybe? Almost? That we humans should be careful playing with genetics? Or something?
Yeah. It still sucks, but it’s not AS stupid the premise initially suggests.
Yeah it was something like, the plan was to find divergent people but the groups liked staying split up and felt it was more peaceful that way. So when a divergent person came along they were suppressed and either forced to choose a group or run away. It’s been a while since I read the books!
That’s actually… a surprisingly good explanation. And I like that the MC is not the only divergent
They use the word divergent to explain as being unique and special. From the perspective of those trying to fix human genetics, a divergent is basically a step in resolving the genetic mix needed. I think the point to not mention you were divergent to live a “normal” life in the society until generations’ worth of divergent mixing normalized the majority of the populace.
A lot of people hated on the third book, but it felt like to me it was the most “whole” of a book because you got a much needed explanation on the world-building.
I didn’t hate the third book I hated how the other two books didn’t make the path to the third book. For what I remember the third book went like a bombshell with little development for what it revealed. But the explanation gave some meaning to the stupidity that came in the other books.
So, the overarching commentary is about eugenics? And possibly also racism, kinda?
I agree with you. I had fun with the book. 🤷🏻♀️.
So the whole point was to make divergents in the first place?
Spoilers book 3 and I’m vague on details here but you find out the characters are actually in a post apocalyptic wasteland of the USA where they’re trying to rebuild the population in various ways to see which is best. If the results don’t work on a grand scale they destroy that city and move on to another test. Basically the aftermath of eugenics wars but you slowly zoom out into the world
I only read the first book. Does it ever explain why not fitting perfectly into one of these boxes gives her superpowers?
The third book. Almost all important stuff regarding world building is done in that book.
Im a sucker for dystopian stuff so I enjoyed the series in a ‘light entertainment’ kind of way.
The ending though was the dumbest shit I’ve ever read. Absoutely unnecessary.
From what i remember it’s plot was effectively discount gattica without the nuance.
Realistically it was just a random YA novel that gained traction randomly as it fit the marketing as many YA books tend to do.
Gattaca is so good. You never hear about it much.
If YA dystpian literature was good, they would just call it sci-fi…
You say that but then it’s if Sci-fi was good it would just be called literature
Like Red Rising, for example.
Divergent is a commentary on the Meyers-briggs test.
My kids describe it as high school cliques. Are you a nerd, a jock, a slacker, etc… It makes some kind of sense to the target audience, because they are still in that mindset. But not to those of us with any more experience in the world outside of the high school mindset. We know how lazy and unrealistic it is to pick out one single trait to describe people
Ah, the Hogwarts Sorting Hat for adults.
It’s so stupid, I’m so annoyed with it. It almost has a message that could make it a proper dystopia (we shouldn’t divide people into factions/divide people based on genetic biases), but Veronica Roth really dropped the ball (there’s a lot of shit so I’ll keep it to just the major points). It’s too bloated with stuff in the middle (why should we care about the uprising of the non-faction people when the evil scientist lady is still trying to kill everyone?!), and she created cartoonishly evil scientists as all of her villains. And they’re shitty scientists! The one in charge of the science faction wants power for power’s sake, and is trying to kill “divergents” for not being normal faction members while trying to upend the whole balanced system the factions were created for; why would she care about divergents when she’s trying to take over the city?? Then the outside scientists apparently messed up human dna and made people have fewer personality traits? (it doesn’t work like that mtherfcker, do some gddmn research). And they are running the city as an experiment to “fix” the dna and make more “divergents”, but even though they have been watching everything they didn’t step in when the science faction lady messed everything up and started killing their divergents. Like, any normal scientist would send you into the sun if you messed up their experiment, especially a long-running one, and we’re supposed to believe they just sat back with popcorn until our protagonist found them?!?
The cartoonishly evil scientists made sense once I found out the author was a Christian Fundie and how those beliefs play into a negative view of science. But the whole thing was super over the top.
whispers oh my god, that would explain the messed up relationship with guilt 🤯🤯🤯
I haven’t read the books but now have to read some Wikipedia pages.
If dystopian systems were based on your personality type outcome according to a buzzfeed quiz
in allegiant i think it was (been a while since i read so this may be false) we learned that humanity was quickly going to shit, so they setup the cities/giant social experiments, and then it went shittier from there
I never thought about this. Marketing was so strong at that time and Dystopia was absolutely new for me. I agree with your point. In my head, I always considered it to be a YA fantasy novel and not dystopian! But during that time, YA Dystopian literature was getting popular! I think the marketing team must have identified that!