Divergent Vs. the Rest

Nia Williams
08/29/13
Prd. 1
Divergent Verses the Rest
The future. What will it be like? Will we live in a wonderful utopia where everybody is equal or will the world crash and burn, leaving us stuck in a crumbling dystopian society? We can’t know what will happen but we can read futuristic fiction everywhere nowadays. Divergent shows very common dystopian/utopian traits that you can find in other literary works, but there are also many differences that allow it to stand out.
Divergent has many components that puts it in the category of a dystopian read.
As several others, it starts out as a utopia and then transforms into a dystopian world. Other books that also do this are Delirium, The Uglies Series, The Matched Trilogy, and The Giver.
Another similar quality is that the people of the given community revolt against the government; as opposed to the government just punishing them as a show of power, like in the Hunger
Games. Also, the government is trying to control and limit the people as much as possible in dystopias. While Divergent has many similarities when it comes to its dystopian aspects, it also does in its utopian areas as well. Governments create the illusion of protection for the
“good” of the people typically by sheltering them from something. For instance, in The Giver, the community was shielded by the memories of the way things were before the system was put

into place. Just like in Divergent, Tris and the others know that they are being kept from something, they just don’t know what that something may be. Decisions are typically being made for the people as well, whether they know it or not.
There are several things that make Divergent stand out among the rest. One thing is the emotional challenges that the characters have to face. Usually the emotional turmoil comes from within the individual character trying to fight the system their world is in. This is known as man verses self. But the government limits decisions, which includes anything too emotional straining. Divergent is unique because every single person has to make a huge decision that has the potential to follow them throughout their entire life. Another thing is that the faction system was actually created for the greater good of the people. Unlike in some books where systems are set up with hidden agendas from the get go. It had great intensions but just like Tris’s mother said “Humans beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps bad in and poisons us again.”
All in all, Divergent has many similarities and differences in comparison to other novels. It starts as a utopia, as many dystopias do. The government makes decisions for the people giving the illusion of protection. Also, emotion heavily comes into play in a completely different way than typical books today. Dystopian books may be trying to tell us something… perhaps we could see a dystopian future. Until we know our future for sure however, there is plenty of entertainment out there to satisfy our curiosity.