*Warning this blog might contain spoilers for those who haven't read the Divergent series*I watched Divergent a couple days back and the movie was so amazing I just had to reread Veronica Roth's trilogy. As I was reading the last installment of the series, Allegiant, I realized that there was a pretty obvious connection to my history class.
The majority of the series takes place in Chicago with the population of the city divided into five factions: Amity, the peaceful, Abnegation, the selfless, Candor, the honest, Dauntless, the brave, and Erudite, the intelligent; those who don't belong in any of the factions are grouped into the factionless and those who belong to more than one faction are called divergent. People who have divergence is a danger to the society due to the fact that they have the power to overthrow the government. In the second book, Insurgent, this problem does take place, and the main characters Tris Prior and Tobias Eaton try to bring peace amongst the broken factions.
In Allegiant, a group of people from Chicago, including Tris and Tobias, head outside the borders of the city to find a solution to bring their city together. There they find out that their city is just one of the many social experiments meant to correct genetic damage caused by other government experiments (which were meant to get rid of the unwanted characteristics like cowardice, violence, dishonesty, selfishness, and low intelligence).
The plot of the last book reminded me of the relationship between England and the American colonies. If you actually think about it the colonies were almost like an experiment that England performed to see how they would profit from the colonies in fields like trade. Once the first colony, Jamestown, ended up being successful, England started sending more charters to start new colonies. This situation is similar to the one in Allegiant with the different "city experiments" as the colonies. It's interesting to see how science fiction has a connection to American history.Picture Citations:
"Allegiant Book Cover" Digital Image. divergentfans.com. http://www.divergentfans.com/thestory
"Divergent Film Poster" Digital Image. en.wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_%28film%29
"The Charter" Digital Image. kelmscottbookshop.com. http://www.kelmscottbookshop.com/pictures/10473.jpg
Great connection. Just a little fact correcting...Jamestown was actually England's second try at a colony in the New World. Roanoke was England's first settlement, and it proved mysteriously unsuccessful. I did love how you referred to the English colonies as experiments, I completely agree.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness.....I loved your blog post!!!!!!!!!!! (I mean I think you would know that since.....yeah) But, yeah I totally understand what you mean and once I had finished reading your post, I was like....woah....I love the connection you made! England is totally like the Bureau in the way of controlling the colonies, or in this way the 5 factions. The people in the Bureau and the monarchy in England are the puppet masters and the colonies and the 5 factions are the puppets. I loved your blog post! The topic was very engaging, pretty popular and your blog post was really easy to read and follow! Keep it up!
ReplyDelete(Chuck Decker on mother's account) you are right these are like experiments. Like Laura said, Roanoke was the first but it still relates. Pretty well done
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I would like to say congratulations on connecting history your favorite books *cues applause*. But honestly good job... I never really thought of Divergent that way. I guess that it is a good thing that Britain's experiments didn't fail like the ones in the book. I would challenge you to make some more connections though: Were there any people sent in to keep the peace like Tris's mom? How much control did each government have over their experiments? Why were the English ones successful unlike the ones in the book? Good Job!
ReplyDeleteYou made a really good connection with the stories and history. I never thought of Divergent in that way. It's strange to think about a government experimenting with its colonies. Overall, you really made a great connection. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI honestly never would have spotted the connection without reading your blog! Its so weird how such a popular movie has connections to our history class! I really enjoyed reading your blog and I think you did a great job on making the connections to class clear. Great Job!
ReplyDeleteWell, I read the first book, and you did a good job connecting the series to history. I would probably not foresee much of a connection though. Just by scanning through the post, and seeing Divergent hooked me, because I wanted to see a possible relation. Good job with it.
ReplyDeleteI have not read the Divergent books, but understood the background of it because you used great details when explaining them. I liked how this connection is not as straight forward as a lot of other blogs I have read, but you really thought about what you were writing. I like how you added book covers to the blog post! It added a lot to the post and let me see sort of what you were talking about. Nice Job!
ReplyDeleteI love the divergent series so when I read the title I was instantly drawn in. Your blog post was very well written, and you made great connections. Nice job!
ReplyDelete