Book Review: Divergent Trilogy Review

Divergent Trilogy

Divergent:  Four Stars out of Five

Insurgent: Three and Half Stars out of Five

Allegiant: Three Stars out of Five

Author: Virginia Roth

I recently reviewed Divergent the book and compared it to Divergent the movie. In this review, I continue the Divergent trilogy series book review. Divergent was published in 2011, with Insurgent following one year later in 2012, and the concluding book Allegiant in 2013. The three books describe a post-apocalyptic world that is centered on Chicago some seven or more generations after a catastrophic war. The primary protagonists are sixteen year old Beatrice/Tris and her eighteen year old boyfriend, Four/Tobias. They live in a society that has been split into five factions that emphasize a single personality trait: Abnegation (selflessness), Amity (kindness), Candor (honesty), Dauntless (bravery), and Erudite (intelligence).

In book one, we are introduced to the world Beatrice and Four live in. At sixteen, each member of a faction must choose the faction in which they will live out their lives. Beatrice and her brother Caleb separated by less than a year in age make a choice that takes them away from their birth faction of Abnegation. This very clever plot point by author Virginia Roth creates a situation where Beatrice’s and Caleb’s parents must demonstrate their love and understanding as regards their children’s choices; it is particularly astute writing as Roth later brings the Four character into the story and discusses his choice to move to a new faction wherein his choice was based on a stark contrast, his desire to flee an abusive father. Such clever uses of plot and character points are used by Roth throughout the three books to discuss behavioral traits that she appears to believe are important aspects of any society.

Divergent continues in a clever (if somewhat formulaic) manner by following Beatrice’s (now renamed Tris) initiation into the Dauntless faction. Here she learns firsthand their primary focus on bravery and meets her initiation instructor and boyfriend-to-be, Four (aka Tobias). Book one describes a pending plot by Erudite’s leader Jeanine against Abnegation that Four and Tris confound, but do not completely defeat. In book two, Insurgent, the plot by Jeanine continues and is ultimately thoroughly defeated by Tris, Four and their new colleagues, the Factionless; a group that is led by Four’s mother, Evelyn. Book three, Allegiant describes a rising resistance movement against the now oppressive Evelyn and the Factionless. The rebel army (the Allegiant) is led in part by Four’s other parent, his abusive father Marcus. Tris and Four leave Chicago as their part in the resistance movement requires them to seek information from those outside of Chicago. In their interactions with those outside of the city (The Bureau), they learn the true history of Chicago and its inhabitants. This history includes revelations that convince Tris and Four that further revolution is needed, this time against the Bureau and their concept of who is “genetically pure” and who is “gene-damaged”.

All three books are well crafted from several technical points of view. In particular, the plot pacing is great in book one, while the characters are so well described in books one and two that it is easy to become captivated or repulsed by several of the central characters. However, while the plot is well paced and logical in Divergent, the first book in the trilogy, it starts to suffer in books two and three. In book two, Insurgent, the plot becomes repetitious and the story-telling is damaged on several occasions with scene segues that seem like editorial miscues. However, my biggest complaint with the trilogy is with an absence of character development.

Consider the case of Tobias. The story alludes in the first book to his abuse as a child and then better defines his backstory in book three. Roth goes so far in book three to use the first person narrative with both Tris and Tobias (after using it only for Tris in books one and two); presumably to better focus on Tobias. I do not find this textual technique to be useful and, in fact, the use of Tobias as the narrator suffered from a poor delineation of his voice from that of Tris’ voice. I often had to re-read some sentences to verify who was speaking, their voices were so similar. But complaints about narrative voice aside, Tobias’ character could have provided a great opportunity for Roth to show Tobias’ evolution as he came to know himself in his new faction of Dauntless (after leaving his father in Abnegation): how his competition and differentiation from the rival Dauntless leader Eric drove him deeper into the Dauntless mindset,  and then again as his relationship with Tris and her driven personality began to interact. Instead, Four’s true personality, one developed in a household ruled by fear, is not even very well defined until very late in book three. Instead, his Dauntless-defined personality of fearless bravery is solely on display throughout books one, two and most of three. There is virtually no change observable in his character, merely a recitation of the events that would have defined a real person. A similar case could be made for Tris. She advances the plot throughout all three books, but her character remains virtually untouched by all the events she lives through. With the potential exception of Tobias' mother Evelyn, none of the characters ever seem affected by their circumstances such they seem to grow or change in any manner.

That a novel designed for the Young Adult audience follows many of the YA genre themes and plot conventions, and lacks characters that resemble actual people by having those characters growing with the plot’s influence on them, does not come as a great surprise. But in a novel series that showed such promise in the first book, it does come as a disappointment.

Footnote:  It seems like Roth recognized her missed opportunity with Tobias late in book three and started to better show the forces that shaped the youthful Tobias. In addition, Roth has since the publication of Allegiant published a fourth book that consists of short stories revolving around Tobias/Four.  I wonder if she too began to see him as a character with greater potential and an additional opportunity to better tell the Divergent tale.

Book and Movie Review: Divergent

Divergent (Book: 2011; Movie: 2014)

Book: Four Stars out of Five

Author: Virginia Roth

Movie: Three Stars out of Five

             Director: Neil Burger

             Screenplay: Evan Daugherty, Vanessa Taylor

It is always a pleasure for me to compare an author’s vision for her book to that of the director’s and screenwriters’ version in a movie. The easiest comparison is a case such as Cloud Atlas where both the movie and the book were brilliant. Even more enjoyable are those few cases where a dreadful book is turned into a work of genius; my favorite example of this is The Bridges of Madison County. Unfortunately the most common transition is from a very good book being turned into something quite mediocre. This is what has happened in the case of Virginia Roth’s Divergent.

Roth has created in her 2011 book, “Divergent” a compelling story that is well crafted technically and thematically. Following a current trend in Young Adult fiction, Roth has placed her story of sixteen year old Beatrice Prior in a post-apocalyptic vision of the future. By means only vaguely described, humanity has separated into five factions; the five factions represent five strengths found in Human nature: kindness (Amity faction), truthfulness (Candor), selflessness (Abnegation), intelligence (Erudite), and bravery (Dauntless). The unlikelihood that Humanity could so separate by either sociological or biological means following a devastating  war is somewhat beside the point in this novel as the separation provides Roth with opportunities to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each behavioral trait. One point she makes via a good use of foreshadowing is that each faction felt that the cause of the war was an insufficiency of their particular’s faction’s strength in those that waged the war. The seeds of factional distrust are there to be readily seen; so much so, one wonders how the separation into factions was ever thought to be a good idea.

The story follows Beatrice, now renamed Tris after she has left her childhood faction of Abnegation to join and train with Dauntless. That she finds and falls in love with a young man (known as Four) should come as no surprise to the reader; or that while she is initially the lowest ranked of the new initiates into the Dauntless ranks, that by training’s end, she is the highest ranked. Like so many YA stories, the familiar traits of bravery, intelligence, and selflessness help Tris to stand out in the face of her physical limitations and a small coterie of bullies. Another frequent theme in YA fiction is the value of a loving family or the corrosive effects of a dysfunctional one. While Tris finds special strengths in the memories of her family, Four’s upbringing provides a stark contrast as his memories of a controlling and abusive father always loom in his thoughts and actions.

Four’s problems from his childhood are cleverly revealed to Tris and the reader via a plot device. This device or McGuffin is a chemically induced simulation of one’s deepest fears.  McGuffin or no, I actually enjoyed its use in both the book and the movie (its use was actually the technical highlight of an otherwise flawed movie). The simulations allow the reader to much better understand who Four is and how he came to be; it also allows Tris an opportunity to grow as a person as she experiences Four’s fears and to help him overcome them. It is a plot device, but it really helps to propel the story along in terms of both the story’s primary arc as well as to also help describe the budding romance between the main characters.

Having developed into a highly capable new member of Dauntless and to have publicly displayed her affection for Four, the story starts what will presumably be the initial stages of the concluding parts to Roth’s Divergent trilogy. On the morning following her graduation into the member ranks of Dauntless, Tris discovers that her new comrades are all behaving in a highly robotic manner. She blends in with them as she searches for Four. They do indeed find one another as well as the destination and intent of their robotic mates. As they further search for an explanation of the other Dauntless members behavior they learn of the secret plot and methods now being employed by one of the rival factions against Tris’ childhood faction. She seeks out her parents and brother in an attempt to warn them and by the book’s end, we find Tris, Four and the various survivors on their way into the hinterlands and book two of the trilogy.

For a debut effort, Roth has in her first year out of college constructed a very good novel. It is aimed at the YA readership but adults can certainly read it with enjoyment as well. Roth has invented an unlikely scenario with the five faction idea and then employed an equally unlikely plot device in the form of the serum used to induce what are essentially controlled and monitored hallucinations. However, I think that such scene settings and plot devices can be acceptable if they are used to good effect. In the case of the book Divergent, Roth has indeed used them to good effect. She explores very effectively the idea of personality strengths and deficits, but also how some personality traits though named and presumed different can in fact be very similar. Her primary example of how bravery in defense of another is really just another name for selflessness is one such example; presumably there will be more such examples in the succeeding books. Roth has shown how such discussions on behavior and their sociological outcomes can be both entertaining and enlightening.

Having praised the book, I turn now to the movie. It was, in short, a disappointment. One could compare it to its cinematic cousin, Mockingjay, Part 1 or to its literary antecedent, the book just discussed. In either comparison, the movie Divergent fails to deliver. The book’s strengths lie in the exploration of human strengths, primarily bravery and selflessness. To illustrate these themes the books delves deeply into the characters, their fears, their strengths, and their weaknesses. The book is able to demonstrate how and what Tris took from her childhood experiences with her mom and dad. Both the movie and the book show the fears that Tris carries as a young adult, but in the movie unlike the book, there is virtually no character definition made. The reader has a clear and firm grasp on where Tris is strong, where she is weak and to whom she must turn for help. But movie viewer is exposed to these fears more as hurdles for Tris to face and conquer; their relationship to her actual nature or to how they have shaped her is completely non-existent.

The movie does utilize the simulations of Tris’ fears very well from a cinematic/technical view. The fear simulations are well executed and create a great set of visual images. But like so many CGI images, they just don’t provide much more than eye candy. The performances of Tris by Shailene Woodley and of Four by Theo James are quite frankly of the same nature; both actors are very attractive, and reasonably proficient in their roles, but there just doesn't seem to be much more than their surface appearance. The director’s control and construction of each scene is perfectly fine, but somewhere between the translation from the book or from the screenplay to the screen, too much of the heart and soul from the book is lost. What’s left is little more than an outline of the ideas that the book presents, and the movie fails to follow up on.