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Rohjani Alvarado
Mrs. Kimberly Stuart
Adolescent Literature
June 3rd, 2020
Book Report on Veronica Roth’s Divergent.

As a teenager, making choices and choosing a path in life is one of the main issues and

anxiety that adolescents can grow through. From a very young age children are asked what they

want to be when they grow up. This continues through highschool and university, where

adolescents are pressured to join a specific major or group of friends and to fit in. Many have

hard times and stress out because they feel like they don’t fit in. The 2011 novel “Divergent”

written by Veronica Roth illustrates the hard ordeals and pressures that teenagers grow through

while ‘trying to fit in’ and following norms of society. Divergent is classified as young adult

literature because of its many characteristics. The first being the characters in the book. The

protagonist of the book is a sixteen year old teenager named Beatrice Prior and other characters;

Tobias Eaton(Four), Peter and Christina. The book centers around these characters and tells the

story from Beatrice’s point of view. In the story Beatrice or Tris explains that in the futuristic

Chicago everyone knows their place except her. She is a confused and lost young girl with many

responsibilities weighing her down which makes her highly relatable to many teenagers in

today’s date.

Being an adolescent is influenced by many factors including biological, social, cultural, and

economic influences.In the novel the people were divided into five different factions;
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Abnegation, Dauntless, Candor, Erudite and Amity. The teenagers of each faction behaved

differently from the next because of the social and cultural influences they had.

“My gaze drifts from Susan to the Dauntless tables across the room. They are

laughing and shouting and playing cards. At another set of tables, the Erudite chatter

over books and newspapers, in constant pursuit of knowledge.A group of Amity girls in yellow

and red sit in a circle on the cafeteria floor, playing some kind of hand-slapping game involving

a rhyming song. At the table next to them, Candor boys make wide gestures with their hands.

They appear to be arguing about something.At the Abnegation table, we sit quietly and wait.”

(Roth, Chapter 2, Pg 14). In the book, it showed that adolescents behave in the same way that

their parents and peers behave in their environment. The protagonist, Tris, was confused and had

a hard time choosing between her family and what she really wanted to be. Similarly, teenagers

all over the world go through the same problem. Where their parents at times choose their

careers for them and don’t give them another alternative. Tris expresses that, “I doubt all the

Erudite want to study all the time, or that every Candor enjoys a lively debate, but they can’t

defy the norms of their factions any more than I can” (Chapter 2, Pg 15).

In today’s date the lives of teenagers have changed dramatically. As you’ve probably

noticed, the lives of today’s teenagers differ significantly from years ago. The ever-expanding

reach of technology and social media has shifted how teens communicate and relate to each

other, how they learn, and the kinds of experiences available to them. In the book, at 16 years

old, Beatrice Prior already had to make the big decision of choosing a faction and leaving her

family permanently.Roth uses Tris to relate to teens and to show that teenagers are now faced

with trying to sort out an incredibly complex world and have the task of learning how to navigate

it successfully. They are beginning to figure out all of the pieces that make them who they are
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during this time in their lives – their identity. In the novel Tris was overwhelmed especially after

she took the aptitude test and found out she was “Divergent”.(Chapter 3, Pg17). Early on in

one’s lives, the question of, ‘ What do you want to be when you grow up?’ is asked and many

would answer a teacher, doctor, nurse or pilot but as we grow up we discover that it isn’t so easy.

Like Tris being divergent, teenagers are also divergent. “ To be divergent is to fit into more than

one faction, like some adolescents are multi-tasked and have many goals and aspirations in life.”

( Thompson, 2014).

To add on, teenagers are also learning the ins and outs of becoming independent. They

go through emotional and cognitive changes. In the novel, Tris needed to be quick and make

difficult choices especially when she had to leave her family and choose her own path, which

was choosing dauntless for her .(Chapter 3, pg 21). “Much of the conflict and stress associated

with being a teenager stems from one core aspect of adolescence which is identity development”

(‘Parent Your Teens’ , 2019). Identity is something that as adolescents we go through and we

struggle with. The question of what do I want to be in life? Or who do I want to become, but

Roth teaches us through Tris Prior that we can all be divergent. That we are ever-evolving and

that like Tris we can be a part of every faction, which is that we can have multiple identities.

However, In different areas of our life, certain identities may be stronger and we may be better in

other professions but we can still try in other areas.

The novel “Divergent” illustrates that adolescence is the time when most young people

start trying to figure out who they are and who they want to become and that many teens will try

on different “identities” for size, looking for the one that fits best. And at one point we will

discover the one that fits just right, so we must not stress over and worry about not fitting in.

Beatrice shows readers that this is part of the normal challenges of adolescence and that we
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cannot simply be a teacher or in her case be a member of abnegation because none of us are one

dimensional. It is through the novel that readers can truly understand that identity doesn’t have to

mean one but that we are able to merge varying aspects of different identities and embrace the

complex person we actually are. Like Tris being a member of every faction .

Works Cited
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Parenting Your Teen.Adolescent Development:A Primer for Parents.Teen MentalHealth.Org.

2019. Pg 35-37.

Thompson, Helen. Teenagers to Explain “Divergent”. Smithsonian Magazine.2014.

Roth, Veronica. Divergent. New York City:Harpercollins.2011.Print.