Reclaiming Humanity: Veronica Roth’s Divergent Trilogy HUM 3905: Junior Seminar Spring 2014 Dr. Perdigao April 16, 2014

Divergent Connections Roles of technology/science Bettering the world: utopian design vs. dystopian reality “new, improved government,” “working toward a world in which people will live in wealth, comfort, and prosperity” (429) “Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again” (441). The Island, Never Let Me Go, Fringe, Almost Human Allowing individuals to live up to their “potential” Frankenstein, Fringe, Almost Human Setting Desolate landscape The Road Markers of progress and decline The Road (past and present), Almost Human (outside the wall), Fringe’s worlds

Divergent Connections Depictions of identity Liminality The Island, Never Let Me Go, Orphan Black, Almost Human, Fringe Hero/heroine’s story Transgression and defiance Prometheus, The Road Fight for humanity The Road, Almost Human, Fringe Governmental (societal) controls and restrictions “It has been this way since the beginning of the great peace, when the factions were formed. I think the system persists because we’re afraid of what might happen if it didn’t: war” (33). The Island, Almost Human, Fringe, The X-Files

The World of Divergent Post-apocalyptic Chicago The Hub, the trains Technological progress, wasteland: “The building that was once called the Sears Tower—we call it The Hub—emerges from the fog, a black pillar in the skyline. The bus passes under the elevated tracks. I have never been on a train, though they never stop running and there are tracks everywhere. Only the Dauntless ride them’” (2). “Renovation moves slowly through the city, which is a patchwork of new, clean buildings and old, crumbling ones. Most of the new buildings are next to the marsh, which used to be a lake a long time ago” (24).

Factioning Role of factions Class in “Faction History” (5) Divisions within society Divisions within individual identity “Just past the Abnegation sector of the city is the stretch of building skeletons and broken sidewalks that I now walk through. There are places where the road has completely collapsed, revealing sewer systems and empty subways that I have to be careful to avoid, and places that stink so powerfully of sewage and trash that I have to plug my nose. This is where the factionless live. Because they failed to complete initiation into whatever faction they chose, they live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses. In return for their work they get food and clothing, but, as my mother says, note enough of either” (25).

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Signs and Symbols Candor Black and white (3) Glass “trustworthy and sound leaders in law” (43) Abnegnation Gray Gray stones “selfless leaders in government” (43) Dauntless Black Lit coals “protection from threats both within and without” (43)

Signs and Symbols Amity Red and yellow Earth “understanding counselors and caretakers” (43) Erudite Blue Glasses Water “intelligent teachers and researchers” (43) actually-belong-inhttp:// actually-belong-in

Cartesian Dualisms Revisited “The mind/body relation is frequently correlated with the distinctions between reason and passion, sense and sensibility, outside and inside, self and other, depth and surface, reality and appearance, mechanism and vitalism, transcendence and immanence, temporality and spatiality, psychology and physiology, form and matter, and so on. These lateral associations provide whatever “positive” characteristics the body may be accorded in systems where it is the subordinated counterpart of mind.” (Grosz 3)

FCAT for the Future? Aptitude tests Beatrice: “‘The tests don’t have to change our choices’” (2). Standardized testing Exposure therapy—brain rewiring (Q & A 6) Results Factionless Power of conformity Born into a faction/choosing new faction Choosing Ceremony (The Giver?) “One choice can transform you.” Self-identification “It’s my choice now, no matter what the test says. Abnegation. Dauntless. Erudite” (23). Essentialism Nature vs. nurture

A New Postmodern Prometheus? Divergent (22) Identity on the fringe Transgression Prometheus for a new age? As anomaly within the system Conquering the test Controlling the program Simulations Fear landscape “The last simulations bled into my life, waking and sleeping. Nightmares, not just featuring the crows but the feelings I had in the simulation—terror and helplessness, which I suspect is what I am really afraid of” (251). “The simulation is all in your head” (254). Hiding Divergence during simulations

A New Postmodern Prometheus? Jeanine: “ ‘Because Erudite developed the simulations, we have an... understanding with the Dauntless, Beatrice... I’m merely concerned for the competence of our technology. If it fails while you are around, I have to ensure that it does not continue to do so, you understand?’” (358).

The Benefits of Fringe Science? Beatrice Prior/Tris Tobias/Four Mother’s Choosing Ceremony Dauntless: Abnegation Identity in flux, in transition Tattooing Defined by new technologies or take control of new technologies? “I am not Abnegation. I am not Dauntless. I am Divergent” (442). “We are creatures of loss; we have left everything behind. I have no home, no path, and no certainty. I am no longer Tris, the selfless, or Tris, the brave. I suppose that now, I must become more than either” (487). Mind/body split for a new era—Erudite vs. Dauntless?