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Tess McNamara
English 1010
Professor McKeever
21 March 2016
Word Count:
Divergent
The movie Divergent, being the first movie of a trilogy, was released into movie theaters
across the country in March of 2014. Starring in the movie are prominent actors/actresses such as
Shailene Woodley as Tris Prior, Theo James as Tobias (Four) Eaton, and Ansel Elgort as Caleb
Prior. The movies setting takes place in a futuristic Chicago. The city that the movie takes place
in is in a post-apocalyptic state, and all the major landmarks that you would recognize in the
modernized chicago today are mostly crumbled down and in ruins.
The futuristic world in the movie surrounds the society that is divided into five factions.
As each person enters adulthood, he or she must choose a faction and commit to it for life. Each
person takes a test called the Aptitude Test to determine which faction they fit into. Generally,
they receive the test result of the faction they were born into. At the choosing ceremony each
person can choose which faction to enter at their own free will, even despite of their test results
or what they were born into. If that were to happen, this would be considered de-facting. The
factions are Dauntless(the brave), Amity(the peaceful), Erudite(the intelligent), Abnegation(the
selfless), and Candor(the honest). If one does not fit into any of the five factions, they are either
faction-less meaning they do not fit any of those personality traits, or they could be
Divergent meaning they show traits from all five factions. Divergents were considered a
danger to the society because the whole point of the factions was to divide everyone. Divergents

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were such a threat due to the fact that they could express more free will than others. During
Triss aptitude test, she received a Divergent result, and was told by her test administrator to
keep it a secret from everyone, including her family, or the people in charge of all the factions
would kill her. At the choosing ceremony, Tris chooses Dauntless which are the brave people of
the factions. Tris was the first one out of the whole group of new initiates to volunteer to take the
brave entrance into the Dauntless headquarters. To enter, she had to jump off of the top of a
building into a hole that was blackened before the bottom, so you could not see what you would
land in/on. At the bottom of the whole was a giant net. Once she landed, Four was there to help
her out. That was her first encounter with Four which ironically at the time, becomes her
significant other. In Dauntless, each person has to train themselves to be strong and to fit into the
faction. Basically, it is a survival of the fittest. Tris was struggling to keep up and eventually got
injured and kicked out to become part of the factionless. One of the popular things a dauntless
person does it jumping onto the moving train that runs through the city. She was not going to
accept that she failed, so she got herself together and went the next event. To get there she had to
run and catch up with the train that was already moving. Four sees her running and helps her
onto the train. The first event that the whole faction does as a group is capture the flag. Four
and the other head of the faction, Eric, are team captains. Four chooses first, and picks Tris. Tris
proves herself to be better than she led on at the beginning by capturing the flag and winning for
her team. Everyone in the factions begins to consider her one to beat. As Tris climbs to the top of
the faction list, the people below the red line, which is 15 people that do not make the cut
begin to plot against her and try to kill her. Four finds her and protects her from these people,
who were in masks. As the movie progresses, Four and Tris get closer. He had figured out that
Tris was divergent, and showed her how to pass the final test to determine whether she stays in

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her chosen faction, or becomes factionless. Four shares with Tris that he has been watching the
faction Erudite. Erudite planned to take over the faction system which was at the time run by
Abnegation. The leader of Erudite is Jeanine ( Kate Winslet). She wants to keep the peace by
killing off all divergents, and creating an army. Four led Tris to the top of a building where they
saw Erudite workers bringing in a serum that would later put all of dauntless into a trance and
brainwash them making them all Jeanines army. After Tris passes the final test, she meets with
all the other initiates that passed their final test and they get injected with the serum by fraud
dauntless leader Eric. Tris wakes up in the middle of the night to everyone marching onto the
train, so she acts like she is one of them. She finds Four, and they both figure out what to do
next. The army of brainwashed dauntless members head into the town where abnegation lives,
and they roll them all up into one area to kill them off. In this process, Tris and Four are caught
by Eric because he figured out they were not under the simulation, essentially realizing they are
both divergent. Four is taken to erudite headquarters with Jeanine, and Tris is taken to be killed.
About the be shot, she hears gunshots and her mother runs up and gets her out. In the process of
escaping and meeting up with the rest of her family and friends that escaped, her mother is shot
and killed. Tris meets up with everyone else and they go to find Four. Four is found, and he is
under a simulation that makes Tris unrecognizable to him. He tries to kill Tris, but she stops
knocks him out the sim but telling him she loves him. They both attack everyone in the building
and manage to get Jeanine to shut down the brainwash program and set the dauntless free.
The director of the movie Neil Burger did a fantastic job with the movie. In my opinion,
the costume and set design were very accurate of the future, and depicted the characters and the
city to a tee. The visuals of the city were very well done. The crumbling of the buildings and the
eeriness of it all could not have been done any better. Also, I think the actors/actresses were

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chosen perfectly. Each character did an amazing job at making their role essential to the movie. I
would honestly rate the movie Divergent a ten out of ten.