Divergent Thinking (23 page)

           
If he had to choose a faction, he'd choose Dauntless. They have the most fun. But he'd go with Amity if they were into zip-lining and jumping into nets and stuff.

       
Are factions good or bad? It's a debate that comes up many times in the Divergent trilogy, including two notable occasions in
Allegiant
: inside Tris' city, as the Allegiant discuss their desire to reinstate the factions, and outside it, when David attributes Chicago's success to the faction system. But neither time does the series offer up a definitive judgment. All we know for sure is that, at least in the world of Divergent, factions are
effective
. . . if sometimes at great cost to individual freedom. Here, Julia Karr takes on the benefits of belonging, the shortcomings of segregation, and the evils to which division and exclusion can leave us open.

J
ULIA
K
ARR

The heat of a
summer afternoon turns oppressive, and even though the sun still shines brightly, the atmosphere is as dark and charged as if storm clouds were gathering. Streets fill with military vehicles and soldiers. Shots ring out. A general and his wife lie murdered in their garden—both shot in the back, execution-style. Another military leader is dragged away from his new wife as they're embarking on their honeymoon and shot dead. A journalist is gunned down; a political rival is hacked to death; numerous high-ranking military, religious, and political leaders are arrested and die by firing squad.

Though almost eerily similar to the simulation-controlled Dauntless massacre of unsuspecting Abnegation leaders, this was a real event. In his nonfiction book
In the Garden of Beasts
, about American ambassador to Germany William Dodd during Adolph Hitler's ascension to power, author Erik Larson describes the chilling scene that unfolded in Berlin on June 30, 1934, at Hitler's order—an event that came to be known as the Night of the Long Knives.

When Jeanine orders the deaths of the Abnegation leaders, she does so without mercy and with the coldhearted intention of removing anyone who might try to thwart her purpose—a purpose that included complete control over the factions and a government of her own design, over which she would rule. Her plan, like Hitler's, could not have succeeded without highly trained, tightly controlled factions of soldiers at her disposal—in Hitler's case, the SS and Gestapo; in Jeanine's, the simulation-controlled Dauntless.

I had just finished reading
In the Garden of Beasts
when I picked up
Divergent
, and I was immediately struck by the similarities between fiction and real life. Both books point out the dangers of blind obedience to any faction, group, or leader. And both show how easy it is to manipulate people who follow a leader unquestioningly (whether because they truly believe their leader is infallible or because they happen to be simulation controlled).

Factions—smaller groups within a larger organization that share a common goal—can be dangerous. The factionless in Chicago are well aware of this. Daily they deal with a lack of basic human necessities, like proper clothing, adequate housing, nutritional food, and medical care, just because they couldn't or didn't want to belong. But the faction system in the Divergent trilogy is also responsible for estranging families, tearing apart friendships, ignoring intolerance and bullying, and suppressing the human spirit—not just expelling or killing anyone who can't, or won't, live up to the demands of whichever faction they are in.

Unfortunately, all this happens in the real world, too.

However, I'm getting ahead of myself. In order to better understand how groups go from good, to bad, to downright awful, we need to first look at what leads people to gather together with like-minded individuals in the first place.

THE GOOD: BEING IN A GROUP

It's human nature to gravitate toward people who like the same kinds of things that we do. It's also empowering and affirming to be part of a group with others whose beliefs are in sync with your own. This is why there are clubs, political parties, and all kinds of different groups, formal and informal, organized around shared experience or shared interests. Spending time with people with similar experiences or values validates the way we think and feel about ourselves and the world around us. It gives us an anchor in what can often feel like storm-tossed seas of life options and emotions.

In the Chicago experiment, we originally learn that the factions are organized around shared beliefs and shared aptitudes. Later, of course, we learn it's also organized around shared identity: similarly modified genetics. So it makes a lot of sense that the Choosing Ceremony takes place at sixteen. Teens are at a point in life when they are beginning to question the values they grew up with and look for their own place in the world. At sixteen, I was searching for my own identity, as were most of my friends. Tris' secret longing as she watches the Dauntless arrive at school each day reminded me of my own desire to become someone different than the small-town girl I was. Whereas Tris aligns herself with Dauntless, I gravitated to the counterculture of the 1960s. Both choices were extremely different than our backgrounds, and both offered a feeling of belonging and a camaraderie with people with whom we could identify. When you find a group that supports who you feel you are inside, you're eager to be a part of it.

Besides identity, another reason to be part of a group is common interests and shared goals. You might join a drama club because you're interested in theater and want to be involved in a play. You might not be able to (or even want to) act, but you might have a knack for or really enjoy set building, costuming, or makeup. In groups like this, everyone adds value, whether they're onstage or behind the scenes. Even though their talents (their aptitudes, you could say) are diverse, they are all integral to the group, and especially its ability to achieve its goal: putting on that play.

Very frequently, a united group can achieve things a single person cannot. Historically, trailblazers like the Puritan colonists or America's early westward-bound pioneers joined together to travel and carve out settlements in foreign surroundings. Although the Puritans had a shared goal of religious freedom, the settlers had varied reasons for traveling west. However, everyone within each group shared the need for safety and survival. That collective need bonded the community because they all knew they were more likely to survive if they helped each other and acted as a connected whole than if the members thought and acted only as it concerned them individually.

Another benefit of joining a group is that it can provide structure and guidance, a safe haven where things make sense. Before Jeanine's failed coup, faction members in Divergent knew both their roles within their faction and their faction's role within the larger community. After Evelyn and the factionless take over control of the city, it is not surprising that some people would want to return to the familiarity of the faction system—or that they would form another group, the Allegiant, so quickly. The faction system was flawed, but it helped people feel secure in the knowledge of who they were and what their purpose was. Losing that is never easy. “And I'm not sure how Dauntless I really am, anyway, now that the factions are gone,” Tris thinks in
Allegiant.
“I feel a strange little ache at the thought . . . some things are hard to let go of.”

Belonging is a powerful thing. It can create bonds so powerful and passionate that you can easily feel a closer kinship with a chosen group than with your birth family. In Tris' world, you can see this feeling (and see this feeling being reinforced) in the motto “faction before blood.” She and her newfound friends become as close as, if not closer than, her family ever was.

THE BAD: BEING OUT OF A GROUP

There's an unavoidable downside that comes with all those upsides: for a group to exist, there has to be something that makes some people “in” and other people “out.” Segregation, by its very nature, focuses on exclusion rather than inclusion, and that comes with the very real risk of not only setting person against person, but group against group—no matter how respectable, principled, and ethical a group might be.

People who remain “in” the group develop biases against those who are not a part of the group, and act accordingly. For those on the outside, the manifestations of these biases run the gamut from the mildly uncomfortable to incredibly harsh.

We see one of the milder manifestations of this kind of bias in the Chicago experiment early in
Divergent,
when Tris transfers to Dauntless and is immediately nicknamed Stiff. “Stiff” is the term other factions use to talk disdainfully about Abnegation. There's a stereotype and accompanying slur for every faction: an Erudite is a Nose; a Dauntless is an adrenaline junkie; a Candor is a smart-mouth; Amities are “banjo strumming softies.” They're all evidence of the prejudices that have arisen from the city's segregation into factions. In Tris' city, where the factions largely live separately, the expression of these prejudices mostly remains verbal. In our world, though, similar prejudices—between different races or sexualities or even groups like nerds and jocks—lead to violence all the time.

Those inside the group, or who want to be there, don't avoid the negative consequences of faction life either. There is often a price one must pay in order to belong—and I don't mean membership dues.

In order to join some groups, initiates must perform certain rituals that allow group leaders to evaluate their suitability to join. Sororities and fraternities on college campuses have rush weeks to screen students who wish to join them, then take on prospective members as pledges. Although many of the pledging rituals are relatively harmless (tending more toward having the initiates embarrass and/or demean themselves publicly), there are times when these customs become far more dangerous. Hazing of prospective members has, on occasion, led to serious physical harm or death—much like in the case of the Dauntless initiate who fails to make the roof when jumping from the train.

Despite these risks, many people continue to take part in initiations and hazings because their desire to get into a certain group is more powerful than their misgivings and fears. Tris herself stuffs down any emotion surrounding the girl's death, rationalizing that being Dauntless is dangerous and people dying is an unavoidable aspect of her new chosen life. That risk is just the cost of being Dauntless.

That need to belong also affects members' behavior. When you want to be a part of something badly enough, you'll do a lot—maybe even anything—to belong, and that willingness to change your behavior in order to become part of a group can be exploited. During Dauntless initiation, the low initiate acceptance rate creates so much rivalry within the group that people like Peter are willing to maim and kill in order to remove obstacles that might keep them from being admitted to the group—which is what Dauntless leadership intends to happen. The desperation to become Dauntless drives initiates not only to get better at positive skills like throwing knives and overcoming fear, but also to become more brutal. And those who are not as strong or as ruthless can get hurt.

Even once you're accepted into a group, things don't necessarily get any easier or better. There are those individuals who initially feel like they belong, but as their new group's dynamic becomes clearer, they're no longer so sure. I never entirely embraced being a “turn on, tune in, drop out” hippie in the 1960s. I hung out on the fringe of the group with the people I felt closest to, never completely fitting in. When reading
Divergent,
I never felt like Tris and Tobias fit into Dauntless 100 percent, either—though they have their reasons for staying, just as I had my reasons for staying on the edges of hippie-dom.

The pressure to behave in a certain way also doesn't go away; you have to adhere to the group's standards (of behavior, or dress, or whatever else), or else lose your place. If you can't conform, then you're out—and even for those who don't feel like the group is a perfect fit, that can be a powerful threat. The worst kind of “out” in Tris' world is to fail your initiation and end up factionless, which Tris (and everyone else) believes is, as Tris says in
Divergent,
“a fate worse than death.” To be left in the world without the support and structure of your faction would be a difficult adjustment indeed. Especially given that Tris' world requires estrangement from family and friends when you switch factions—the way many cults require their members to cut off contact with anyone from their former lives.

The Peoples Temple, formed by the charismatic James “Jim” Jones, encouraged new members to break familial ties and end prior friendships. Isolated from outside support, initiates were worn down by sleep deprivation, constant lectures, intimidation, and abuse until they were completely dependent on the church for their very lives. (Doesn't sound much different than Dauntless initiation in some ways, does it?) In the end, over 900 of those lives were ended in Jonestown, Guyana, November 18, 1978, at the instruction of the Peoples Temple leaders—either by mass suicide or murder.