Divergent Thinking (6 page)

As indicated by her original test results, Tris is fairly low on agreeableness. She describes herself as “not nice,” and while she is extremely loyal and loves fiercely, she also gets a rush out of physical confrontations and violence. And yet, if Tris
were
higher on agreeableness, she likely wouldn't be able to rebel the way she does. In order to fight for what one believes in, a person
has
to be able to fight.

WHAT IS DIVERGENCE?

I believe that part of the appeal of the Divergent series comes from the fact that in presenting readers with these five factions, Roth has essentially offered up a personality test that asks readers to answer the same question that Tris must: Who are
you
?
Where do
you
belong?

Are you high on agreeableness? Maybe you belong in Amity. Score off the charts in openness to experience, and you might be a better fit for Dauntless. The caveat to this exercise, however, is that unlike the factions in
Divergent
, the Big Five personality traits don't compete with each other. They were identified as traits of interest
because
each one seems to exist independent of the others. A person can be open
and
agreeable
and
neurotic
and
conscientious
and
extraverted—or any combination thereof. You might score high on all five traits—or two of the five, or three, or none. Being highly agreeable doesn't mean you can't also be open to new experiences, any more than being introverted means that you can't be conscientious.

For this reason, it is likely that many—if not most—of the people who read this series are themselves Divergent. I'd probably be Amity or Erudite, but I'd bet my simulation wouldn't rule out Abnegation.

In
Allegiant
, we learn that most of the individuals in Tris' community have a genetic modification that causes them to score at an unnatural extreme on one trait. The scientists in the book describe the original modification as an attempt at getting rid of negative traits, but for traits that exist along a spectrum, no matter which way you frame it, the end result is one and the same: eliminating aggression
is
increasing agreeableness. Either way, “genetically damaged” individuals end up with unusually extreme scores in one and only one trait—be they extremely high (fearless and open) or extremely low (selfless and not extraverted in the least), while the genetically “healed” individuals—the Divergents—score more like the rest of us. In this way, the series itself confirms the idea that in its natural state, human personality is not typically driven by one extreme trait that drowns out the rest.

This explains a great deal about why so many people in Tris' world seem to have no problem dedicating themselves to a single faction; however, there is a large part of me that believes that the scientists in
Allegiant
got it wrong—that Divergence, as depicted throughout the series, is not simply a matter of being “genetically pure.” Throughout the first two books, Divergence is defined by two things: an affinity for more than one faction and the ability to stay aware in the simulations. The scientists consider the latter to be nothing more than a “genetic marker,” a convenient sign that someone has reached a certain milestone of genetic purity.

I don't believe them.

These are the same scientists who believe that war did not exist before genetic modification. They've lost touch with history; I believe they have also lost touch with some pretty major tenets of science, including what it means to
do
science in the first place. The scientific method prioritizes asking questions in a way that
could
disprove your theory. If there is no outcome that would change your conclusion—say, that “genetic damage” is associated with violence and can be healed through the world's oddest selective breeding experiment—then what you are doing
is not science.

If you have been raised from childhood to view your theory as fact, even as you are being taught how to conduct your “experiment,” what you are doing
is not science.

If you twist your data to fit your theory by ignoring any data points that could call your theory into question—like Marcus, a “genetically pure” man who is nonetheless violent—what you are doing
is not science.

And if you are a geneticist who—for reasons that escape me—believes that the way to get rid of a mutation is to take tons of people who have that mutation and
breed them together
, I reserve the right to side-eye your scientific credentials.

All of which goes to say that there are plenty of reasons
not
to take Matthew and company at their word about what it means to be Divergent. I tend to think that the fact that Divergents are aware during simulations isn't just some genetic marker; to me, it is the single biggest clue about what being Divergent might—at least symbolically—mean.

I believe that being Divergent means being
aware
—not just aware that the simulations aren't real, but
self-aware.
We all vary in the degree to which we demonstrate each of the Big Five personality traits; to me, what makes Tris special is not so much the fact that she scores at the extremes on three of the five, but the fact that she is keenly
aware
of where she stands. She is constantly analyzing herself, breaking her personality down into parts, actively attempting to construct an identity, and aware of all of the ways in which the various identities she tries on do not fit. She is critical of people who lack this kind of self-awareness: she judges Caleb not only for being “despicable,” but also for having “no understanding of how despicable he is” (
Allegiant
).

When we get to see Four's perspective on Tris, he notes that while what Cara has gone through has made her certain of herself, Tris' suffering has just made her cling to her uncertainties
more.
Tris knows what she doesn't know, and she is able to use that level of awareness to come to a striking conclusion about human nature: “That internal war doesn't seem like a product of genetic damage—it seems completely, purely
human
” (
Allegiant
).

Ultimately, it is Tris' insight into her own vices and virtues, her own wants and needs, that sets her apart. She recognizes how very much she is driven by the need to belong. She sees the parallels between the factions inside the fence and the divisions outside the fence. And ultimately, she realizes that words and labels may not fulfill the human need to belong as fully as relationships do. When she dies, it is not as a “GP” or a “Divergent,” not as “Abnegation” or “Dauntless,” but as a sister and a lover, a daughter and a friend.

I like to think that Tris' death serves a purpose, not just in the atrocities it prevents, but also in the way that it might cause other people to introspect, to question who they are, their vices, their virtues. I like to think that for the second time in her life, Tris has seen a group of people dazed and sleepwalking, and she's woken them up.

I like to imagine that in the wake of losing Tris, Caleb and Four—and so many others—are a little more Divergent now.

       
Jennifer Lynn Barnes
has degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science. She's the author of twelve books for young adults, including the Raised By Wolves series,
Every Other Day,
and
The Naturals.
When she's not writing about teens confronting extraordinary circumstances, she studies the psychology of fiction and why we like it.

       
Let's pretend, for a few thousand words, that Divergent's world is not an invention, but a reality
—
one that evolved from (or, more accurately, given the Bureau's involvement, was constructed from) our own. Could we locate the landmarks of Divergent's future Chicago on a map of today's, using what we know of both the real city and the clues provided by Tris in the text? In her essay, V. Arrow has done exactly that.

V. A
RROW

I
know all the words she's saying
—
except I'm not sure what [a] “united states” is
—
but they don't make sense to me all together . . . Chicago. It's so strange to have a name for the place that was always just home to me. It makes the city smaller in my mind.

—
Allegiant

Before Tris Prior and
the rest of her small group come together to escape from their city near the beginning of
Allegiant
, all she knows is Chicago—but not Chicago, Illinois. Not Chicago, in Cook County, in the United States of America. In the years between now and the time
Divergent
takes place, the Chicago we know has become a bubble-nation on the former shore of Lake Michigan.

To Tris, because the city is everything, it isn't a city at all, but an entity—a world—unto itself, with its own set of rules, regulations, landmarks, and history. Although the names remain for places like Navy Pier, the Merchandise Mart, even Randolph and State Streets and Michigan Avenue, there are no reference points for Tris to know what they were built upon. The names, and roots, of landmarks in Chicago's long history have been lost, just as much as the genetic codes the Bureau hopes the Divergent can heal. What would determine which names would stay and take on new meanings and which would fade away and take on new titles, like the Hub? (
Millennium
means nothing if you don't know the year. What does
Monroe
mean to a city that's never known US presidents?)

While Chicago's rich history may be unknown to Tris, it does seem to continue on through many of the characteristics of the factions. In fact, when David explains to Tris and her fellow refugees early on in their stay at O'Hare Airport that Chicago has been the most successful experiment, enough to have become a model for other experimental cities, it brings to mind one of the Windy City's other long-standing nicknames—
The City That Works.
“Your city is one of those experiments for genetic healing, and by far the most successful one, because of the behavioral modification portion. The factions, that is” (
Allegiani
).

When I first began to map the Divergent trilogy's Chicago, the foremost question in my mind was,
How can an entire dystopian world scale down to one city?
Does each faction have its own fenced-off territory, like the districts of Panem or the provinces of
Matched
, or can a Dauntless member—theoretically—take a stroll down the street that Candor's headquarters is on? Is Chicago still a functioning
city
at all?

The placements of the faction headquarters in relation to the Hub and the train line would have to answer that question, since Tris spends most of the peacetime of the series in initiation, unable to leave the Dauntless compound, and then is on the run during the battle after Jeanine's attack simulation. While Tris is the only window to the Divergent trilogy's Chicago that we have, her Chicago—her world—is a place divided by war, not just by factions.

Today's Chicago, too, is a segmented city, but it doesn't have separate addresses for its identities the way New York City does. Being in The Loop or Devon Avenue in Chicago does not impart the same feeling as being in Chinatown or Greektown or Wrigleyville, not to mention the vast and spidering network of suburbs that make up “Chicagoland.” The identity of Chicago is, and has always been, one of rivalries: Cubs versus Sox, North Side versus South Side, Gino's East versus Giordano's deep-dish pizza. The darker underbelly of these rivalries, of course, are the divisive issues of race and economics that have been a part of Chicago since its inception: some historians believe that the modern concept of the street gang began in Chicago, and Chicago's history of organized crime is notorious. Government corruption and police brutality plague the city's history. Communities are, for their own protection, often insular, despite the lack of strict geographic boundaries.