Thing of the Day: DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth

I wasn't planning on this particular Thing of the Day, but there's life for you. Always throwing wrenches and crow's feet and sticky grenades in your plans. Silly life. Annnyway.

My friend from school lent me this book, DIVERGENT, and I started it yesterday and finished it... yesterday. So I wanna talk about it for a sec. (By the way, it's set in dystopian Chicago, and I've been to Chicago, so nyeh. 'S cool to read about a city you've been to. Like when Percy Jackson accidentally blows a hole in the St. Louis Arch and stuff while fighting a chimaera. But that's sorta beside the point.) Point is, this particular dystopian society is separated into five factions, which people sort themselves into at the age of sixteen depending on their personality. However, the protagonist, Beatrice Prior, also/later known as Tris, doesn't fit nicely into any of the factions and is therefore considered Divergent, which is the same thing as "extremely dangerous to the government," because she can't be controlled. Apparently, Divergence is very rare in this society. Now, here's what's funny. My parents have raised me Divergent all my life. They sat me down and gave me a big serious talk about divergence right before I started public school. My whole family is majorly divergent. So reading about this chick who was raised in a theoretical box and whose life is constantly in danger because she's just discovered that she's Divergent is fascinating to me. It's like, whenever she thinks she should just fit in and do what her faction is doing, I'm going, Nooo, that's not the way to do it. Do your own thing, Tris! In fact, I believe that if everyone were more Divergent, the world might even be a better place for it. Instead of hordes of sheepul who do and think whatever theyr'e told, we might have a community of aware people who know what's going on in the world and aren't afraid to speak/act differently than perhaps the government wishes they would. In the book, the five factions are based on the qualities of selflessness, kindness, knowledge, truth, and courage. You have to pick one. You don't get to be all of them. But one of the characters, Four, says he wants to be all of them, and that everybody should be all of them. They can't work as well independently of one another. Here's me in total agreement, you guys.

And get this; just for kicks, I took the faction quiz in the back of the book, which is supposed to determine which faction you would be in, and my results were... inconclusive. I had answers in every category. I can't be classified. I'm Divergent. I KNEW IT! And the really funny part is, Divergent wasn't even a choice in the results. Just the five factions. They didn't actually build Divergence into the quiz. Isn't that interesting? And the even funnier part is, I took the quiz before I actually read the book, and I didn't know what it meant, at first, that none of my answers matched any one single faction. Then I read the book and I was like, oh, I get it now.

So basically, I'm so glad my parents didn't raise me in a way that lets other people put me in a box. I like being Divergent. Yay padres especiales! It's wasn't a particularly well-written book, slightly sub-par to Hunger Games, I would say; but it did make me think. Which is good.

Now I gotta go clean the house and vacuum up some wasp carcasses before the fam gets here for Easter tomorrow. Later, all!

Commander Kip
"What if they solve the case first?" *derpface* "Nah."
Normal is overrated!