Insurgent
Revised 8/16/15
I don’t understand why Divergent is popular. There is no real reason for it to be. The series doesn’t have a lot to make it stand out. If one were to look down the young adult section of any book store you would see book after book after book set in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future starring a strong independent female protagonist turning herself into a badass while also falling in love in an attempt to revolutionize society. Yet this book sticks out for some reason. Why?
Any understanding of fiction needs to begin with the story. In the first book, the protagonist Beatrice Prior lives in a society separated into five factions that all value different traits, and you get to pick where you fit, but Tris is a thing called Divergent which means she can go into more than one faction, and isn’t affected by simulation serums that change the way you perceive reality. She joins the faction Dauntless (the brave) leaving Abnegation (the selfless) and makes a bunch of friends during initiation, whilst falling in love with a guy named Four. Eventually, the Erudite (smart) faction in an attempt to overthrow the government attempts to commit genocide of the Abnegation using a simulation on the Dauntless faction, which Tris is unaffected by and stops, but in the process she loses her parents.
So, Insurgent opens right where Divergent left off. This is a blessing to the fans, but is otherwise confusing especially to the people like me who read this one first. Anyway, this story starts with the three and Four going out to Amity Headquarters (the farmers that value peace and “kumbaya”) and stay there for a while until Erudite comes looking for them. They run back into the city and stay with the factionless for a while, then they leave Caleb to go do less relevant things while Tris and Tobias go to Candor Headquarters (logic and law) seeking support.
At some point Tris surrenders herself to the Erudite and they test her brain for Divergent superpowers, but she escapes with help from Tobias and some guy named Peter (who’s probably very important in the first book). At this point in the story, the simulation serum injection stuff has been redesigned to work on Tris.
Some less relevant things happen, and the climax of the book is a siege on Erudite headquarters by the Factionless, Candor, Abnegation, and Dauntless while Amity and our resident protagonist try to intervene. Eventually the person who can access the computer with the thing on it that Tris wants to protect gets shot, but since Caleb knows computer-y things, he fixes it and we get our segway into Allegiant.
…Or something like that. As you can tell this is a very confusing story mostly because it heavily depends on the reader having closer knowledge with the first story than many people probably do, but in part because the world isn’t particularly vivid.
The setting is a post-really-terrible-war-future Chicago with a fence around it surrounded by farms. The setting isn’t visually described as much as it could be. This is my biggest compliant with the series and it’s why I think the movies are better. It’s supposed to be a futuristic world, but there aren’t enough details for me to properly put a mental picture together. I understand that the little expository things that go into sci-fi world building don’t hand themselves well to the way the book is written, and also wasn’t important to the author, but in trying to develop a visual the story looks like every science fiction city ever. This was an important detail that was sadly left out.
That said, the world is still built. Tris is our protagonist. To sum up her character, I will say what factions she fits best into. According to the book, she has aptitude equally for Dauntless, Abnegation, and Erudite, meaning she is brave and selfless, but smart enough not to act like an idiot. She isn’t as curious as one would anticipate, and really chose Dauntless for a good reason. “I decide to keep the shirt to remind me why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because they are alive. Because they are free” (283). Personally, I think the story would have been much more interesting and original if it followed her brother Caleb because he has a bigger choice to make, but I digress.
It’s a good idea to talk about conflict before we talk about the antagonist. This is one of the most major places where Insurgent deviates from its Hunger Games counterpart, Catching Fire. Where the Hunger Games universe is very clearly a dystopia, the Divergent universe is not. In fact, it’s supposed to be the perfect government. The story says: “‘We have formed your society in a particular way in the hope that you rediscover the moral sense you have lost’” (524). That said, the conflict of this book is not man vs. society. From Tris’ perspective, society isn’t the problem, the people in the society are the problem. It isn’t even a man vs. man conflict. It’s ideal vs. ideal. There’s a lot of exploration of the psychology behind fighting a civil war which paints all the sides as correct in their own incorrect way. Clearly there is an antagonizing force or the story wouldn’t happen, but nobody is ever really in the wrong. It’s only painted that way.
Our antagonist, so to speak, is Jeanine Matthews, the Erudite faction representative/leader or something. I’m not really sure what she is, but she’s in charge. She strongly represents what Erudite stands for, the pursuit of knowledge. What makes her the antagonist is the extreme she’s taken this ideology to. That said, I don’t think Jeanine would have tried to become a fascist dictator if she were raised a different faction. Erudite gave her the tools to turn her into an efficiency nut. Jeanine is, for all intents and purposes, the bad guy trying to commit genocide in order to overthrow a government that she thinks is inefficient. The problem with labeling Jeanine as the antagonist is that she thinks she’s doing the right thing. The villain of the story is always a very sympathetic character because their actions are motivated by their values.
The point of the story is the society. The idea of the social structure divided into five factions is the core of the story, and is clearly what the author wanted to focus on. It isn’t supposed to be a dystopia like the blub on the cover paints it to be; instead it’s a commentary about the way our society naturally divides itself. An example of this could be different artistic communities within the same fandom.
The people who wrote the blurb just didn’t get this book. Unlike the Hunger Games, it isn’t a dystopia, it is a utopia. It is a modern analysis of an attempt by mankind to create a society where everyone can be happy. A society where cliques are the law and everyone can have a supportive productive environment in which to live. The failure of this system is that support leads to superiority, and superiority leads to prejudice. This book is smarter than I thought it was. It wasn’t fantastic, but if you liked The Hunger Games you’ll probably like it for what it’s worth.
Any understanding of fiction needs to begin with the story. In the first book, the protagonist Beatrice Prior lives in a society separated into five factions that all value different traits, and you get to pick where you fit, but Tris is a thing called Divergent which means she can go into more than one faction, and isn’t affected by simulation serums that change the way you perceive reality. She joins the faction Dauntless (the brave) leaving Abnegation (the selfless) and makes a bunch of friends during initiation, whilst falling in love with a guy named Four. Eventually, the Erudite (smart) faction in an attempt to overthrow the government attempts to commit genocide of the Abnegation using a simulation on the Dauntless faction, which Tris is unaffected by and stops, but in the process she loses her parents.
So, Insurgent opens right where Divergent left off. This is a blessing to the fans, but is otherwise confusing especially to the people like me who read this one first. Anyway, this story starts with the three and Four going out to Amity Headquarters (the farmers that value peace and “kumbaya”) and stay there for a while until Erudite comes looking for them. They run back into the city and stay with the factionless for a while, then they leave Caleb to go do less relevant things while Tris and Tobias go to Candor Headquarters (logic and law) seeking support.
At some point Tris surrenders herself to the Erudite and they test her brain for Divergent superpowers, but she escapes with help from Tobias and some guy named Peter (who’s probably very important in the first book). At this point in the story, the simulation serum injection stuff has been redesigned to work on Tris.
Some less relevant things happen, and the climax of the book is a siege on Erudite headquarters by the Factionless, Candor, Abnegation, and Dauntless while Amity and our resident protagonist try to intervene. Eventually the person who can access the computer with the thing on it that Tris wants to protect gets shot, but since Caleb knows computer-y things, he fixes it and we get our segway into Allegiant.
…Or something like that. As you can tell this is a very confusing story mostly because it heavily depends on the reader having closer knowledge with the first story than many people probably do, but in part because the world isn’t particularly vivid.
The setting is a post-really-terrible-war-future Chicago with a fence around it surrounded by farms. The setting isn’t visually described as much as it could be. This is my biggest compliant with the series and it’s why I think the movies are better. It’s supposed to be a futuristic world, but there aren’t enough details for me to properly put a mental picture together. I understand that the little expository things that go into sci-fi world building don’t hand themselves well to the way the book is written, and also wasn’t important to the author, but in trying to develop a visual the story looks like every science fiction city ever. This was an important detail that was sadly left out.
That said, the world is still built. Tris is our protagonist. To sum up her character, I will say what factions she fits best into. According to the book, she has aptitude equally for Dauntless, Abnegation, and Erudite, meaning she is brave and selfless, but smart enough not to act like an idiot. She isn’t as curious as one would anticipate, and really chose Dauntless for a good reason. “I decide to keep the shirt to remind me why I chose Dauntless in the first place: not because they are perfect, but because they are alive. Because they are free” (283). Personally, I think the story would have been much more interesting and original if it followed her brother Caleb because he has a bigger choice to make, but I digress.
It’s a good idea to talk about conflict before we talk about the antagonist. This is one of the most major places where Insurgent deviates from its Hunger Games counterpart, Catching Fire. Where the Hunger Games universe is very clearly a dystopia, the Divergent universe is not. In fact, it’s supposed to be the perfect government. The story says: “‘We have formed your society in a particular way in the hope that you rediscover the moral sense you have lost’” (524). That said, the conflict of this book is not man vs. society. From Tris’ perspective, society isn’t the problem, the people in the society are the problem. It isn’t even a man vs. man conflict. It’s ideal vs. ideal. There’s a lot of exploration of the psychology behind fighting a civil war which paints all the sides as correct in their own incorrect way. Clearly there is an antagonizing force or the story wouldn’t happen, but nobody is ever really in the wrong. It’s only painted that way.
Our antagonist, so to speak, is Jeanine Matthews, the Erudite faction representative/leader or something. I’m not really sure what she is, but she’s in charge. She strongly represents what Erudite stands for, the pursuit of knowledge. What makes her the antagonist is the extreme she’s taken this ideology to. That said, I don’t think Jeanine would have tried to become a fascist dictator if she were raised a different faction. Erudite gave her the tools to turn her into an efficiency nut. Jeanine is, for all intents and purposes, the bad guy trying to commit genocide in order to overthrow a government that she thinks is inefficient. The problem with labeling Jeanine as the antagonist is that she thinks she’s doing the right thing. The villain of the story is always a very sympathetic character because their actions are motivated by their values.
The point of the story is the society. The idea of the social structure divided into five factions is the core of the story, and is clearly what the author wanted to focus on. It isn’t supposed to be a dystopia like the blub on the cover paints it to be; instead it’s a commentary about the way our society naturally divides itself. An example of this could be different artistic communities within the same fandom.
The people who wrote the blurb just didn’t get this book. Unlike the Hunger Games, it isn’t a dystopia, it is a utopia. It is a modern analysis of an attempt by mankind to create a society where everyone can be happy. A society where cliques are the law and everyone can have a supportive productive environment in which to live. The failure of this system is that support leads to superiority, and superiority leads to prejudice. This book is smarter than I thought it was. It wasn’t fantastic, but if you liked The Hunger Games you’ll probably like it for what it’s worth.