By: Any’ah Caljean
Divergent is a sci-fi, young adult, dystopian book written by Veronica Roth. It has another two books that act as sequels, as well as another that acts as a prequel from another character’s perspective. Focusing on the first book, Divergent, we begin by meeting the main character, Beatrice Prior. She tells the readers about the five factions that make up the city of Chicago—Abnegation, Dauntless, Erudite, Candor, and Amity. Abnegation is selfless—where Beatrice was born, Dauntless is brave and courageous, Erudite is intelligent, Candor is honest, and Amity is kind. The people of Chicago were sorted into these factions by their aptitude, but some people end up being more than one. We get to see this aptitude test through sixteen-year-old Beatrice’s eyes and how she ends up having an aptitude for three factions—this is almost unheard of—which is called Divergence. In this book, being Divergent is dangerous, or so Beatrice thinks.
Once the children of each faction turn sixteen, they take the aptitude test, as mentioned before, and once they see what they most fit into, they get to choose what faction they join. They have the option to stay in their current faction, or to leave and join another. The day they choose is called the Choosing Ceremony. On this day, we see Beatrice Prior choose the faction of Dauntless; being the only other Abnegation member to ever leave and join Dauntless. She decides to leave her family behind.
Each faction has an initiation that the new “members” must complete in order to be proper members. Dauntless has the most dangerous initiation. If you want to find out what the initiation is, and what happens to Beatrice, you’ll have to read the book for yourself. You could borrow the book from the library or from the Sora app on the iPad. If you enjoy dystopian novels, I definitely recommend this book to you.
