Recommend: Divergent series

Well, I’ve done it. In the space of four days I’ve finished the entire Divergent series. Yes, all 1215 pages. Don’t look at me like that.

What does this say about me? Besides that I can read and comprehend really fast? Well, it says that determination, normally a strength, has its dark points. It’s been difficult to do or think anything outside the Divergent world since Monday evening. Also, that I easily replace emotional struggles with distractions, and books are potent distractions.

There’s a lot to compare with “Hunger Games,” but comparison is not fair to the author. Roth uses a dystopian world for a purpose, and it may not be the same that Collins intends. I haven’t read “Hunger Games,” only watched the movies, so I won’t comment here.

Roth explores virtue through two characters set in a dystopian landscape. Her characters, Tris and Tobias, journey from black and white to greyscale perspectives on five virtues over the course of the series. The environment serves both to mirror and administer the transition by inducing crises of belief. In the same way that the story begins with five distinct factions, Amity, Abnigation, Erudite, Dauntless, and Candor, and ends with an anarchy of fluid categories, Tris and Tobias begin with a simple, innocent perpective and end with mature views of the good and evil inherent in human virtue.

Since reading this book I’ve also begun “Adam and the Genome” by Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight and realized that Roth’s work also explores how genetic discoveries and the diversity of virtue in a population interact. Perhaps this is even her primary intent? In her first two books, genetics are implied, and in the third they’re explicit. The tests to determine one’s faction presupposes a genetic disposition, and the option for children to select out of their existing factions demonstrates mutation. The system of genetic sorting is questioned in the second book and overthrown, but with an uneasiness about what alternative might surface. This unease is capitalized on in the third book, where Roth raises the question whether humans ought to think in genetic categories in the first place. The third book also questions whether it is ethical to prevent genetic damage from persisting through reproduction.

I suppose that, with any novel, one gets what one puts into it. Roth’s books have been an entryway into deeper thought about genetics in a flourishing society, and for that I’m grateful.