Well, my booktube is up and running and my videos are up and hopefully not completely terrible, so here’s my first review of Divergent!
The chapters in this novel are actually quite small (unlike some books I won’t name, coughTheMortalInstrumentscough) so I’m probably going to read a few chapters at a time. As well as, I have the physical hard copy of the book as opposed to an online one, so there will probably be a lot less quotations in this round of chapter-by-chapter blogging!
Are you guys ready? Yay!
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| actual photo of me writing these recaps |
The book starts incredibly interestingly. We’re introduced to Beatrice, who tells us there is only one mirror in her whole house, and she’s only allowed to look into it the second day of every third month when her hair gets cut. We find out her hair is blonde:
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| I, for one, am SHOCKED. |
And that she is in a faction called Abnegation, where they shun birthdays, vanity, anything that isn’t selfless, probably like... human emotion as a whole. I'm going to assume it's a whole faction of robots. We also find out it’s her sixteenth birthday and that means she’s going to the Choosing Ceremony, where she decides on which faction to spend the rest of her life in.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s not this one, since then there would probably be no plot.
On the way to the choosing ceremony, we meet her brother:
“My older brother, Caleb, stands in the aisle [ ... ] We don’t look alike”
And a man from candor, who is wearing what every emo teen wore to their prom in the early millennium:
“The candor man wears a black suit and a white tie—Candor standard uniform. Their faction values honesty and sees the truth as black and white, so that is what they wear.”
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| this just in, everyone in Candor is Jack White |
What a... literal translation of that.
The bus ride sort of serves as an intro to every faction, and we hear about Dauntless, Erudite, Amity, and of course the other two she previously mentioned. I’m really liking Roth’s writing style so far—she’s able to paint a picture with very few words, and I love it.
I will say, though, Beatrice is already getting on my nerves. Every second thing out of her mouth is just self-deprecating, and it’s tiring.
I’ve never been that graceful.
I GET IT, BELLA SWAN.
My father calls the Dauntless ‘hellions’. They are pierced, tattooed, and black-clothed.
So basically every teenager’s dream and every parent to that teenager’s worst nightmare.
Beatrice tells us that there’s a test that will help them to decide what faction they would like to be in. Ultimately, the choice is their own, but it’s meant to help guide them down a path they might excel at.
In the lunch room, we get an even better feel for the factions. Amity is a bunch of hippies:
A group of Amity girls in yellow and red sit in a circle on the cafeteria floor, playing some kind of hand-slapping game involving a rhyming song.
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| if your mind didn't go here then I'm sorry we probably can't be friends. |
And then we have the Ravenclaws, the Erudites:
At another set of tables, the Erudite chatter over books and newspapers, in constant pursuit of knowledge.
Beatrice is quite clearly not cut out for her own faction of Abnegation, and she spells that out for us, using her brother in juxtaposition. Basically, she sucks at being selfless, and he doesn’t, so she feels lost.
The test begins, and it’s a bit strange and confusing, but kind of neat. They sit in a room with an adult who runs the test, and are attached to a machine that I’m assuming distorts the reality around them so as to create scenarios that aren’t real. They also make them drink a potion to knock them out, so this is probably all a dream world.
The test itself is a series of decisions: knife or cheese, attack a vicious dog or submit to it and hope you don’t get killed, tell the truth about knowing a murderer, or tell a lie. It’s pretty clear what each of these things is meant to show you about yourself.
What about the lactose intolerant people like me who wouldn’t choose cheese because they can’t eat it? Just sayin’.
When Beatrice is pulled out of the dream world, it turns out that she had weird test results. We learn, through her worries, that there are people who live ‘faction-less’, but they’re the equivalent of the outcasts of society.
The woman comes back into the room and says that the only two factions ruled out for her are Candor and Amity, as well as maybe Abnegation. The title of the book comes immediately into play here, and the woman tells Beatrice that she’s Divergent.
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| SUCH DRAMA. |
She walks home after her test, lamenting that she’s special and different, which is, ugh, Beatrice, why.
“[The factionless] are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses”
What a fucked-up classist way of dealing with things? So if they don’t survive the initiation they get kicked out of society and yet still have to work for them?
She arrives home and waits for her brother.
My natural tendency toward sarcasm is still not appreciated.
Ugh, me too, Beatrice.
The story leads me to believe that Beatrice is going to choose Dauntless, which, of course she is. That’s clearly the most interesting one in the whole novel, and they keep saying things like this:
I hear a train horn, so faint it could easily be wind whistling through an alleyway. But I know it when I hear it. It sounds like the Dauntless, calling me to them.
A friend described Roth’s hints as something like this:
And I have to say that I whole-heartedly agree.
My mother told me once that, a long time ago, there were people who wouldn’t buy genetically engineered produce because they viewed it as unnatural. Now we have no other option.
There is a tense dinner table discussion involving the government in this new community, and it’s pretty interesting. Each faction has a few representatives, though the actual council itself is composed of Abnegation people because they are “viewed as incorruptible”.
After dinner they're meant to return to their rooms for quiet time and think over what they might choose, and it scares the crap out of Beatrice.
The chapter ends with a great line, which makes me really excited to read more:
It will require a great act of selflessness to choose Abnegation, or a great act of courage to choose Dauntless, and maybe just choosing one over the other will prove that I belong.
That’s an awesome line.
Over all, I'm enjoying it so far. I'm a bit wary at how blank Beatrice feels as a character-- but I will give Roth the benefit of the doubt considering she's placed her in an area where showing any extreme emotions is looked down on. She feels very muted at the moment, and I hope that goes away.
I’m really excited to read this guys! I’ll read Chapters 5 through 10 next week, until then, check out my BookTube or leave a comment below!
- CR
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