Divergent Thinking

by Leah Wilson

  In some ways, this aspect of Tris’ story parallels the classic teen movie trope of an introverted teenager making the conscious decision to break out of her shell. Shortly after Tris joins Dauntless, Christina even gives her a makeover, replacing her gray clothes with a little black dress, lining her eyes with eyeliner, and declaring, “I’m going for noticeable” (Divergent). And yet, even after Tris transfers to Dauntless, aspects of her Abnegation roots remain. She is never a look at me, look at me kind of brave. She leads quietly and by example. For many people—even Four—she remains difficult to know.

  Erudite: Conscientiousness

  The third faction that Tris shows an aptitude for is Erudite, the faction that prizes knowledge and intelligence above all else. And yet, the Erudite are not defined merely by being smart. After all, there are plenty of intelligent people in the other factions, too. Rather, the Erudite seem to be a very specific kind of smart—extremely organized, unemotional, almost pathological in their devotion to logic and reason.

  In terms of the Big Five, this cluster of traits maps onto Conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is associated with self-discipline: perfectionists, workaholics, and those driven to achieve all rate high on this trait. Conscientious individuals plan ahead. They pay attention to details. They are highly organized, highly efficient, and they finish what they start.

  Sound like anyone we know?

  The Erudite are known as meticulous record keepers. Jeanine is slavishly devoted to her master plan. She’s a “walking, talking computer” (Divergent). Caleb finds Jeanine persuasive at least in part because he, too, has a thirst not just for knowledge, but for singularity of purpose. Even Cara, in the final book in the trilogy, founds the Allegiant to work toward a two-pronged goal: to overthrow Evelyn and to send a scouting party outside of the city. The way she presents this to the others feels almost like she’s checking items off a to-do list, even if those items involve “escape to unknown” and “rebel.” When she ultimately discovers that the plan has no meaning—that the faction system is part of an experiment and the Edith Prior tape was contrived—she is lost. Cara doesn’t know who she is without the plan, without purpose: “I’m an Erudite, you know,” she tells Tris. “It’s the only thing I am” (Allegiant).

  Tris has an aptitude for Erudite not because she’s studious or a lover of books, but because she is a strategist. Whether it’s for capture the flag or a preemptive strike against those playing with the lives of those she loves, she is a planner who will go to great lengths to see things through to the end. Ultimately, the difference between Tris and Jeanine is not in their ability to form plans or to execute them—it’s the fact that Jeanine is willing to do so at great costs to others, and Tris does so no matter the cost to herself.

  Candor: Low on Neuroticism

  Candor prizes honesty. It is difficult at first to see how this could correspond to any of the five traits we use to classify human personalities—until we unpack a bit more about what this means on a day-to-day basis. The Candor wear black and white; they don’t get bogged down in shades of gray. Their manifesto proudly declares, “We have no suspicions and no one suspects us” (Divergent bonus materials). Candor initiation involves the forced confession of an initiate’s darkest secrets. Afterward, no one has anything to hide, and as a result, they do not have to worry about the consequences of telling the truth.

  The personality trait associated with worrying about how other people view you is Neuroticism. People who are high in neuroticism are prone to embarrassment. They tend to be insecure and highly anxious. Other people might describe them as sensitive. In other words, they are the exact personality type that could not survive in Candor. In contrast, individuals who are low in neuroticism are not easily embarrassed. They are confident, tend not to worry, and are not easily bothered. Both aspects of Candor—always telling the truth yourself and weathering the emotional costs of constantly being told what other people think of you—require a personality type that is relatively immune to anxiety. For individuals high in neuroticism, things are not always black and white—and the difference between gray and dark gray might be worth agonizing over in and of itself.

  During her simulation, Tris proves that she does not have an aptitude for Candor by lying when asked if she knows a man. In that moment, her heart pounds. She is overcome with anxiety and convinced—convinced—that if she tells the truth, something awful will happen. That fear—of an unknown, ambiguous something—is a prime example of neuroticism, and ultimately, it’s the reason that Tris adamantly does not belong in Candor.

  Amity: Agreeableness

  Finally, we have Amity, the faction that most clearly maps onto one of the Big Five—so much so that it might as well be called agreeableness. Individuals who are high on agreeableness are friendly, warm, and cooperative. They may be overly trusting. They tend to lose arguments—and may refuse to argue altogether. Highly agreeable individuals avoid conflict, find it difficult to hold grudges, and may express little to no desire for vengeance when they are wronged.

  When I take personality tests, this tends to be the variable on which I score the highest. With the possible exception of a life-or-death struggle, I cannot imagine hitting another person—and yelling is almost as out of the question. I do stand up for what I believe in, but I also pick my battles, and they tend to be very polite battles. Once, when I was crossing the street and got nicked by a car, I apologized to the person who hit me.

  In Insurgent, when Marcus refuses to share the secret of Edith Prior’s video with Johanna, she makes a similar apology. Rather than confronting him for being secretive, she apologizes for whatever it is that she’s done to make him think she’s not trustworthy. When the Amity vote, it is expected that it will be unanimous; and when they vote to allow Tris and company to stay at the Amity compound in the beginning of Insurgent, the condition on that invitation is that the guests aren’t allowed to even reference the conflict.

  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.

  MAPPING DIVERGENT’S CHICAGO

  V. ARROW

  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.

  In other words, for what Divergent’s world must be, Chicago is the perfect setting.

  Like Veronica Roth, I’m from Chicagoland, that network of commuter suburbs surrounding the city, so I had some idea of the geography the story deals with, and some preconceptions from my casual initial reads of the series: I thought Amity might exist in Lake Forest, a suburb just outside the city on the shore of Lake Michigan; Candor would fit well with a headquarters at the Dirksen Courthouse on Dearborn, where the famed mafia trials “Operation Family Secrets” took place in the 1970s. Abnegation seemed to me to fit Andersonville, an area of the city that is quaint and less overtly urban, with deep Swedish and German Lutheran roots. Because Chicago is a city with so much culture and such deep intellectual roots, there were a myriad of places that I thought Erudite might fit—the current-day campus of the University of Chicago; the Museum Campus, home to the Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, and the Shedd Aquarium; maybe the Museum of Science and Industry; or even Northwestern University, also in a suburb off the lake. A closer reading was definitely needed.