GEC- 108

ETHICS
Activity 8
PRESENTED TO:
FORTEVILLAR B. ABENIR JR

PREPARED BY:
Jeremay Daradar
Movie title: Divergent (2014)

Main characters:
Beatrice (Tris) Prior- The intelligent, courageous sixteen-year-old
protagonist. Unable to conform to the humble ideals of Abnegation, her
home faction, she joins Dauntless, where she struggles to be both brave
and unselfish.

Four (Tobias)- A trainer of Dauntless initiates who transferred into the

faction.

Jeanine Matthews- The person with the highest IQ in Erudite, and the
faction’s leader and representative on the city’s political council.

Eric- A Dauntless leader who transferred from Erudite and is now in

charge of training Dauntless initiates, which he does with excessive
brutality.

Al- Tris’s friend, a Dauntless initiate who transferred from Candor.

Peter- Boastful, intelligent, and cruel, he’s willing to do anything to place

first in the rankings, including attack fellow trainees.

Christina- Tris’s best friend in Dauntless, a bold and funny initiate who
transferred from Candor.

Will-A sarcastic but kind Dauntless initiate who transferred from Erudite.

Molly- Like Peter, she is a loudmouth and a bully who constantly

ridicules Tris, her family, and her home faction.

Tori-Tris’s aptitude test administrator and a member of Dauntless who

works in the tattoo parlor.

Marcus- Tobias’s father and a leader on the Abnegation political

council.

Edward- An Erudite transfer to Dauntless who has studied hand-to-hand

combat since childhood.

Caleb Prior- Tris’s brother, who is also sixteen. Tris resents his
tendency to lecture her about selflessness and is shocked when he
leaves their family to join the Erudite faction.

Natalie Prior- Tris’s loving mother. A model Abnegation member who

works at a volunteer agency, she surprises Tris by revealing her
Dauntless background.

Andrew Prior- Tris’s father and a member of the political council that
rules the city. He is devoted to Abnegation and feels betrayed when both
his children leave for new factions.
Analysis:
The story takes after the catastrophic war and the remnants of the
population in the crumbling city of Chicago. The society has been structured
around five groups, each dedicated to a singular virtue — Candor (the
honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the kind),
and Erudite (the smart). As I watched this movie of Divergent I saw how Tris
is branded as "different" and a danger to society because she was different.
When they are 16, the teenagers are given an aptitude test to show which
faction they best fit in before being given the opportunity to choose their
permanent faction. But Beatrice learns that her test results are inconclusive.
The administrator advises her to keep these results secret, even from her
family. They show she is "Divergent," a kind of multi-talented and rebellious
individual who poses a threat to the society.
Throughout the film, I observe a distinct sort of cultural relativism in
which the government is divided into five groups or factions, each with their
own set of standards and beliefs. These rules and ideals require everyone
in that society, which frequently leads in leaving your family and the faction
into which you were born. Being in a specific faction is important in these
young adults' lives since it is their new existence and defines who they are.
Tris, the primary character, is seen breaking several of her rules, resulting
in punishments on herself and her loved ones.
Tris has to fight for her life in order to save herself and everyone else
who is divergent. Being divergent in the time present in the movie was a
dangerous trait to have and if caught the consequences were fatal. A
normal taboo throughout the movie was the find divergent people and kill
them. There were many types of ways to find divergent, but Tris managed to
learn how to avoid getting caught. Many of the value clusters such as
education, hard work and success were also portrayed during the movie
when Tris and her team wanted the villagers to know what is happening and
how they are going to help them.
After watching the movie, we can see that rules are everywhere but only
apply to those who live in that specific culture. Rules are created for
equality and to establish a better living. Even though cultures are all
different there are many similarities in how we all live and without rules
there would be to regulations in life. Divergent explains what kind of culture
we would live in if we broke government rules and became on our own.
Moral Lesson:
Divergent taught me so many lessons. First it's good to be
different. Everyone was so concerned with fitting in and being seen as
a good member of their faction that they forgot who they really were.
Just like when you spend all your time trying to fit in and be seen as a
good person, you stop focusing on what’s really important in life.
Second everyone has fears.
Courage isn’t living a life without fear, or living with less fears
than anyone else like Four. Courage is the ability to face your fears
and take action anyway. Most often, our fear is a sign we ought to
learn to use as a tool to drive us forward and break through to a whole
new level instead of using it as an excuse to give up or quit. Next if
you really want something, never give up.
When you feel like giving up, when life knocks you down, when
you’re battered and bruised and feeling weak, make a commitment to
keep going until you succeed. What's next is take the time to see
things from a different perspective. During the game of capture the
flag, Tris climbs up the ferris wheel to get a better view of the field of
play. Watching that scene was terrifying but I realize sometimes you
have to do something new, different and scary if you want to achieve
your goals in life. No one said life had to be easy. But there’s no
excuse to just sit around and argue instead of getting to work and
working on what’s most important right now in your life.If you want to
win big, you have to start by looking at the world differently.
Lastly, test results don’t mean anything in the real world.
Just like the test results Tris got in the Aptitude Test, tests in school
and college should all be labeled “inconclusive.” Not because
everyone is the same – we’re not. We all have different strengths and
skills. Rather, tests should be labeled inconclusive in school because
they don’t measure anything that matters for the vast majority of
people. Tests simply measure a particular kind of knowledge at a
particular point in time (and the ability to communicate it according to
the rules of the test). Test results measure nothing about the future,
your potential or your worth as a human being. Many famous
billionaires, entrepreneurs and successful artists dropped out of
school or failed out of school. In the real world, what counts is what
you do and how you do it. A test you took yesterday, last year, or 20
years ago has absolutely no bearing on what you choose to do right
now. And what you choose to do is what will determine how successful
you are in the real world.