Everybody knows how I am crazy
about young adult movies/books. As “Hunger Games” is over now I am giving my
focus to “Divergent” series. Unlike “Hunger Games”, I didn’t read the books of
“Divergent”. So I can’t compare the movies with the books ‘luckily’ J Let me give a quick
summary before we go deep into it. The series took place in a post-apocalyptic
Chicago where people are divided into 5 factions (groups) according to their
dominant characteristic features. Abnegation for the selfless, amity for the
peaceful, candor for the honest, dauntless for the brave and erudite for the
intellectual. Every year all sixteen-year-olds are put on a test in order to
determine their factions. They don’t have to accept the faction that comes out
of the test. Then, they need to choose whatever they want but they need to prove that they belong to the
faction they have chosen. If they can’t prove that they are out of the society
and they are labeled as factionless which make them live miserably. Their world
is surrounded with the walls. They believe that the whole world is a disastrous
place and they can’t and should not go outside. Straightforward, sounds
familiar, so what? What if one person comes up and has all these features,
selflessness, peace, honesty, braveness and intelligence. You know that it was
coming right? The first film started there. Our female hero Beatrice “Tris” is
divergent which means she possesses all 5 features. But she needs to hide this
as a secret because the government punishes the divergents as they think they
are threats to the society. Mankind is
always afraid of what he doesn’t know or can’t control. This sounds very
familiar too, right? So the first film was busy with showing how Tris tries to
fit in in one of the factions and they that doesn’t work out. In the second
film the government has already understood that Tris was a divergent and they
wanted to catch him for a very difficult experiment. It was a very difficult
test and she managed to survive that. (I assume that when I say test you don’t
imagine a very difficult math test or multiple choice test ;)) Ta taaa the outcome of the test says that
the divergent people are key for the survival of the mankind. Second film
ends like this. Recently the third film is released and of course I’ve watched
it immediately. While everybody was cheering because there was no government,
no rules, factionless people took advantage of people’s anger to punish the
governmental people and try to rule them again. Additionally they forbade people to go to behind the walls as they are
afraid! Do you think that they can stop Tris? Tris and her friends managed
to go behind the walls and they were welcomed in a new world. However now they
are also discriminated because apart from Tris the others were not pure which
means that they were forced to be in faction, so even they were born divergent
they were not divergent anymore, so they were damaged. If we look at the
picture what happened? They fought, they
were killed, they suffered to be free from the factions and at the end they are
again labelled as pure and damaged.
This got me thinking. I am
looking to the world. Unfortunately we are also living in a world where
everybody puts everybody into a category “you are black, you’re Jewish, you’re
Asian, you’re Muslim, you’re democrat, you’re vegan, and even ‘are you a dog
person or a cat person’ ?!”. More interestingly even if someone doesn’t fit
into a group we just try to label him/her. This time as “crazy, anti-social,
disagreeable”. Because you have to fit into something. You have to be in a group
of people like you as if you are a sheep and someone should be a leader to
guide you, tell you what to do and not to do. Then we feel safe, we feel
protected. It is also easier with labels to blame. We will just blame the whole group for one person’s action and done!
By the time we are blinded by our group leader and the relaxation of being safe
becomes dullness and there dies the creativity, sense of inquiry. We become
really like sheep and at the end if one
sheep jumps from the cliff the others follows.
I am always touched by these following words.
“First they came for
the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a
Socialist.
Then they came for the
Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a
Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the
Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a
Jew.
Then they came for
me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
We forget that we are all human. We created all those
labels. We drew all those lines. We build these systems and now we are fighting
to each other for them. Before we realized there will be no one left to share
this beautiful world and remember(!) “Happiness
is only real when shared”.
