Divergent: Does it Diverge from the Book?

Chicago is ruined, inhabited by five different factions. Abnegation strives for total selflessness.
Erudite seeks knowledge. Candor speaks only the truth. Amity aims for peace, avoiding all conflict. And the Dauntless seek to embody bravery. At the age of 16, young adults must choose the faction that they will join, leaving their families behind forever if their choice is different from their parents’. Let’s just say that at 16 I probably would have chosen anything but my parents’ choices!

Tris, who grew up in Abnegation, decides to join the Dauntless. The tests she takes to make this decision are supposed to make the choice obvious, but her tests turn up something unusual—she is Divergent, which is a fact she’s supposed to hide from everyone.

Her Dauntless initiation is violent and disturbing, but it’s also loaded with the kind of sexual tension that would have had me riveted as a teen and still keeps my attention as a middle-aged lady. However, I never have appreciated the kind of violence that characterizes the Dauntless rite of passage, a beatdown that no longer adheres to the original goals of the faction that seeks to instill courage. Instead, it breeds cruelty. And the Divergent are seen as a danger. Plus, one wonders why a futuristic society that can come up with some sort of electronic tattooing device can't find a way to make boxing gloves.

Shailene Woodley, who has demonstrated her acting chops in The Descendants and The Spectacular Now, plays Tris. Theo James takes on the part of the complex and conflicted hottie named Four, Tris’s instructor and possible love interest. They are great; they are just better than the movie itself. And I can't wait to see Woodley in The Fault in Our Stars later this year.

The heroes of Divergent are defined by one characteristic, a situation with which a few of them are discontent. They long to be more. But they have been reared to believe that the ultimate goal is to embody one characteristic. Which gets complicated when you start feeling compassion toward a rival, or when you are willing to bravely sacrifice yourself for someone you love.

The author, Veronica Roth, has mentioned on her blog that she started writing Tris’s character as a way to combat her own anxiety, a way to be brave and take control. This is certainly a theme that would resonate with any teen.

Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t do justice to the book. Even my 15-year-old daughter, a Divergent fan, thought that it was basically just a typical action movie. I don’t think her opinion was shared by all of the opening-night crowd, which cheered at many violent moments in the film. And then there was the older woman behind me, who at a particularly violent moment, exclaimed her discomfort with the events.

Divergent the movie has lost track of the soul of the books they are based on—Tris’s innocence, the desire to be more than what they have chosen, and the relationship that is more than just the sexual tension. The movie version of Divergent is less challenging and less interesting than the book from which it arose, leaving the film a bit hollow, like the factions themselves.