So one of my favorite Dystopian novels is a little book called "Divergent". As you may know, a lot of things have been happening recently regarding the Divergent series. The movie is coming out in March of 2014 and there have been some really awesome trailers:
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And the newest (and also last) book in the series came out not too long ago:
So I thought this may be a good book to talk about. I'm only going to be talking about the first novel though, not Insurgent or Allegiant.
Now obviously if you haven't read the book Divergent there will be SPOILERS in this blog post.
Let's talk about Tris and whether or not she is a feminist character.
So Tris is definitely one of my favorite characters in modern literature. She grew up in the faction Abnegation, which is all about being selfless and putting others before yourself. Because of this, Tris is a very selfless character. This is an admirable quality, but also a common quality of female characters in literature. However, before Tris even decides to join Dauntless, she demonstrates the idea that she is not a completely selfless character. She constantly wants to act selfishly, but as someone is stuck in the faction of Abnegation, she knows she can't. A lot of people kind of make fun of the Abnegation for being such push-overs. So when Tris does decide to join the Dauntless, she surprises everyone by becoming a total badass. She kicks butt physically, mentally, and emotionally. Not to mention she also qualifies for the Erudite faction, which means she is smart too.
That's right. A female character who is intelligent, selfless, and brave. I mean, that's kind of the point of the whole "divergent" thing, right?
Something I love about this book is that it really makes a point of showing the reader that people are complicated. By that, I mean that you can't fit a person in a box. There are five factions in the novel: Dauntless (bravery), Abnegation (selflessness), Erudite (intelligence), Candor (honesty), and Amity (kindness). And in this world in the novel, people are supposed to only qualify for one of these factions. However, when Tris takes her test to decide which faction she belongs in, she qualifies for three of the five factions, making her Divergent. And also, in trouble.
Tris, along with some other characters, can't be fit into a box. People are complicated and have many layers and dimensions, and sometimes they make mistakes and sometimes they don't.
It's pretty common to see female characters who are selfless. We've seen it time and time again where a woman sacrifices herself for a man, making her a hero. But Tris doesn't do that. We see many instances in the novel where she does demonstrate selflessness, but we also see some instances where she chooses herself over others.
One of the biggest examples of this is the end of the novel. Everybody is basically walking around acting like killing zombies because that bitch that's the head of the Erudite faction implanted something in all of their brains that would cause them to walk around and shoot their friends. Tris is awake for all of this, since she is Divergent and this thing doesn't effect Divergent people, and so she is trying to defend herself from her zombie friends. One of her best friends, Will, tries to kill Tris. And instead of trying to sacrifice for herself for him or something, she kills him.
Does Tris feel immensely guilty after this happens? Yes. But she had to make a decision, and she had to make it quickly, and she chose herself over her friend, as I'm sure many, many people would have done in the same situation. If you ask me, that's pretty refreshing to see a female character do that in literature.
I think that's a good place to stop. I'll be talking about Tris's relationship with Tobias and feminism in a later blog post.
Thanks for reading!
