Society and Class Quotes in Divergent
How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
My cheeks warm. I get up and dust myself off. A few people stopped when I fell, but none of them offered to help me. Their eyes follow me to the edge of the hallway. This sort of thing has been happening to others in my faction for months now—the Erudite have been releasing antagonistic reports about Abnegation, and it has begun to affect the way we relate at school. The gray clothes, the plain hairstyle, and the unassuming demeanor of my faction are supposed to make it easier for me to forget myself, and easier for everyone else to forget me too. But now they make me a target. (1.37)
The book opens with a couple of hints that not all is well in Chicagoland. In this passage, an Erudite boy has pushed Beatrice and called her a "Stiff." But this isn't just about Beatrice. No, this bullying has been happening to a bunch of other Abnegation kids, too. To make matters worse, no one from other factions is stepping in to stop it. This is a picture of a society with a big problem coming.
Quote #2
This is where the factionless live. Because they failed to complete initiation into whatever faction they chose, they live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses. In return for their work they get food and clothing, but, as my mother says, not enough of either. (3.39)
Every faction has its own particular jobs—and even the factionless have a role in society. The factionless do the jobs that no one else wants to do (or that don't fit in well with the other factions' ideas of what's important). What's funny to us is how important those jobs are: a society without janitors is a society that soon will die of suffocation under a heap of trash. So even those on the outside of the system help the system.
Quote #3
"Working together, these five factions have lived in peace for many years, each contributing to a different sector of society. Abnegation has fulfilled our need for selfless leaders in government; Candor has provided us with trustworthy and sound leaders in law; Erudite has supplied us with intelligent teachers and researchers; Amity has given us understanding counselors and caretakers; and Dauntless provides us with protection from threats both within and without. But the reach of each faction is not limited to these areas. We give one another far more than can be adequately summarized. In our factions, we find meaning, we find purpose, we find life."
I think of the motto I read in my Faction History textbook: Faction before blood. More than family, our factions are where we belong. Can that possibly be right? (5.35-6)
Factions aren't just groups of people who like the same stuff. In other words, they're not fan clubs. They're groups of people who share the same values, which means they're drawn to the same jobs. But note that after that long (long) explanation of how great factions are, Tris still isn't sure about the whole faction vs. family thing.
Quote #4
I hear a shout and look over my shoulder. A short Erudite boy with red hair pumps his arms as he tries to catch up to the train. An Erudite girl by the door reaches out to grab the boy's hand, straining, but he is too far behind. He falls to his knees next to the tracks as we sail away, and puts his head in his hands.
I feel uneasy. He just failed Dauntless initiation. He is factionless now. It could happen at any moment. (6.15-6)
Tris narrates just about every step of this event, which is very quick (boy fails to get on moving train) but also very serious (boy is now factionless forever and ever). It's a nice reminder of the dangers of Dauntless initiation to Tris (who really doesn't want to be factionless), like when a movie/TV show kills off a minor character so you know that the major ones are never safe. Well, at least this scary moment answers the question of where factionless come from. They're people who failed the initiations.
Quote #5
I wander around the room, looking at the artwork on the walls. These days, the only artists are in Amity. Abnegation sees art as impractical, and its appreciation as time that could be spent serving others, so though I have seen works of art in textbooks, I have never been in a decorated room before. It makes the air feel close and warm, and I could get lost here for hours without noticing. (8.103)
The factions really define everything about a person's life experience, from job choice to recreation to even food choice, like when Tris is surprised by hamburgers (7.37). And here's a great example of that: the Amity are the only faction that does art, while Dauntless art consists of tattoos (and probably sewing eagles onto their jackets).
Quote #6
"When can I go again?" I say. My smile stretches wide enough to show teeth, and when they laugh, I laugh. I think of climbing the stairs with the Abnegation, our feet finding the same rhythm, all of us the same. This isn't like that. We are not the same. But we are, somehow, one. (17.104)
Of course, Abnegation doesn't go zip lining around the city, even if it is a fast way to travel. But what's interesting to us about this event isn't the difference in factions' ideas of fun activities. (Candor probably plays truth or dare but always picks truth.) What interests us is that Tris can a sense of community and togetherness in both actions. So some values are shared from faction to faction.
Quote #7
"The leadership," he says. "The person who controls training sets the standard of Dauntless behavior. Six years ago Max and the other leaders changed the training methods to make them more competitive and more brutal, said it was supposed to test people's strength. And that changed the priorities of Dauntless as a whole. Bet you can't guess who the leaders' new protégé is."
The answer is obvious: Eric. They trained him to be vicious, and now he will train the rest of us to be vicious too. (18.108-9)
Society isn't a static thing. We don't know how long the five factions have been set up, but we can see that things are changing (like with Erudite hating Abnegation). Even within the factions, things are changing, as Four makes clear here: the Dauntless leadership has decided to take this whole "let's be brave" idea in a new direction.
Quote #8
"I think we've made a mistake," he says softly. "We've all started to put down the virtues of the other factions in the process of bolstering our own. I don't want to do that. I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest." He clears his throat. "I continually struggle with kindness." (31.75)
In many other dystopian books, the main characters would find an old book (or an old person) that would describe to them a different way for the world to be. But Four and Tris don't have those old books, so they don't know what life was like before the five-faction system. Still, Four thinks that there's got to be a better way than his "my virtue is better than yours" form of society. This isn't just an abstract question about society for Four—this is a question about how he wants to behave all day everyday.
Quote #9
"You're my daughter. I don't care about the factions." She shakes her head. "Look where they got us. Human beings as a whole cannot be good for long before the bad creeps back in and poisons us again." (35.32)
Natalie sure lays out a depressing theory of the world here: something will always go wrong. And, like mother, like daughter, Tris says something very similar to this earlier (31.76). But what's curious about Natalie's comment is how she accepts the failure of their society (factions aren't good, people aren't good) while holding up hope in family. Maybe that's a hint of what's to come after this world really hits the fan.
Quote #10
Abnegation and Dauntless are both broken, their members scattered. We are like the factionless now. I do not know what life will be like, separated from a faction—it feels disengaged, like a leaf divided from the tree that gives it sustenance. We are creatures of loss; we have left everything behind. I have no home, no path, and no certainty. I am no longer Tris, the selfless, or Tris, the brave.
I suppose that now, I must become more than either. (39.87-8)
The collapse of society sure sounds promising. And we're only kind of joking: notice how Tris spends a long paragraph describing how bad things are—two out of five factions seriously messed up, everything lost and left behind. But then Tris notes that she'll have to grow her identity even more than she already has. Society may be collapsing by the end of the book, but there still seems to be some hope in the individual and family and friends, right?