"Divergent" think it goes in the 'how is this a best seller?' category.

Haha. You're starting to sound like a typical English professor.

 

When I was a teenager I read Lobsang Rampa, Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Rice Burroughs, plus a lot of Victorian erotica and Marquis de Sade. I would have never touched stuff like Hunger Games or Divergent.

 

Marquis de Sade is pretty dark stuff...I remember reading parts of 120 days of Sodom. It's a great manuscript if you're a paedophile and looking for something to tickle your taste buds

Still wasn't as shocking as George Bataille's Story of the Eye, all the same...

 

This, of course, begs the question, when were you a teenager?

 

Wait........really?

120 days of Sodom is a book?

I just thought it was a really gross movie.

 

In the sense of the "teenagers" portrayed on TV and in films, or even in a lot of fiction, probably never

 

I don't think the way you present the Divergent conflicts is fair. Tris has to choose between staying or leaving home, yes, but the choice she makes leads to other conflicts between her and the group she chooses. In the meantime, she reflects upon who she is, who she wants to be all the while competing to rank high enough at the end of her initiation so as to not become a societal outcast - if she even makes it through the ruthless initiation alive, that is.

Divergent surely has conflict, it's just on a more philosophical, introspective level than the Hunger games. That's one of the most major points where both book sagas differ, I believe.

One of my main issue with the Hunger Games was the fact that Suzanne Collins didn't delve deep enough in the psychological, sociological aspect of everything that was happening. How could the capitol people be so cruel for instance? They gasped at the thought of sending a pregnant player into the arena and they (Katniss's fashion crew) cried at the thought of letting Katniss go into the arena, but they didn't find it sad enough to be against the games altogether? Why didn't they care about the fact that they were oppressing thousands of people? Was the government feeding them lies to have them on their side? We didn't really get their side of the story.
Katniss herself also seemed quite robotic, emotionless throughout the books. She indulged in the diamond dresses and other flashy luxuries of the Capitol without ever (or barely) commenting on or feeling a little repulsed by the fact that these riches were the product of dire labor from the districts, she demonized the careers like they were the bad guys in the Games although all the kids were victims of the Capitol and then she killed people without seeming that unfazed by it. I didn't find her very likeable as a person (and so I had trouble understanding what her love interests saw in her. The romance seemed quite shallow) or relatable either, but I read on because the plot was undeniably cool and I wanted to know how they would make it.

Divergent, however, has characters that you really do not want to separate from when you reach the end of the last book. The first book is very character-driven at first, but the plot also gains sudden momentum near the end of the book. It's followed by Insurgent, which has much more action relevent to the political conflict but all the while developping the main characters and their relationships in such a way that makes you relate to them and care about them. And then there's Allegiant, the book with all the most crucial revelations.

I've seen many people criticize this book on the basis that they think the categorization system (Erudite, Abnegation, Dauntless, Amity and Candor) is way to simple. Humans cannot be categorized that way, they say, but the thing is that the author knows that fact very well - it's even her whole point. This whole series is a commentary on the complexity of human nature and how ignorant we are in relation to what determines human behavior. That's why the characters aren't one-dimensional despite that they live in a society that tries to categorize them as though they are.

Veronica Roth even said in an interview that we don't have to fear that the world will ever divide into five simple factions, so she knows that the world she built isn't very realistic, but she wanted to lay out exactly why that isn't going to happen; why that system wouldn't work. So I think you should approach the story from a more hypothetical angle ("It's not going to happen, but if society ever did divide into five factions based on the characteristic they find the most important to achieve peace, what would that be like?").

I understand why people conclude that this series is ridiculous because of the oversimplification and quit reading, though. The meaning of Divergence and how the society came to be divided into such unnatural groups is still pretty fuzzy by the end of book one and it's only fully expanded on in the last installment of the series. Maybe Roth made a mistake there, maybe she expected people to be more patient than they are. And I'm not speaking about "impatience" in a negative way, it's justified that people don't waste their time on a book that they feel won't get better. But I, personally, did feel like it would get better while I was reading it.

Tris's philosophical musings on the meaning of bravery and selflessness, the inner conflict she experiences as she weighs the values and ideas her parents have instilled in her against the ones she encounters in her new ruthless environment and the way she struggles with wanting to be taken seriously and respected, it was all so suiting of a teenager girl, so reflective of the way people actually think and feel that I couldn't help but trust that Roth knew enough about how humans to not believe that they can be put into simple boxes.
Furthermore, this book has some interesting insights to share about sacrifice, the power of knowledge, the value of honesty... in short, it delves into what place the five prominent characteristics of each faction have in society, how they impact human interactions. That's particularly true in the second book where we get a better idea of how the factions other than the one Tris has chosen function.

People might be quick to throw that onto the pile of popular junk (and, well, if Twilight was a huge hit, it's understandable that people are suspicious of other popular YA adult novels), but I think this one is of superior quality despite its flaws. Not just because of the story, but the writing also, which I found enjoyable overall. It is very concise, like Suzan Collin's in The Hunger Games, but it's descriptive and diverse enough to surpass Meyer's in Twilight (How many times did Meyer repeat that Edward was a greek god with "amber eyes", "marble skin" and "cold/glacial breath" again?). I think there were even some sentences that caught my attention because the word choice allowed a very precise and fluent mental representation of movements and places that I would personally have had trouble describing as a writer.

Because of this all, I believe that Divergent (as a book series) deserves all the attention it's getting. Roth has definitely been very lucky with regards to timing, we're in an era wherein the masses are particularly open to YA dystopian literature, yes, but I don't think all of it is owed to the fact that it adheres to the currently working formula. Yes, the strong-willed female insurgent heroine and the grouping of kids based on personality traits have been done before, but then again, these are incredibly generic fundamental elements of a story that anybody could come up with. I don't think it was that much more imaginative before Harry Potter and the Hunger Games. Many fundamental story elements have been used countless of times, but I don't think they have often been used the way they've been by Veronica Roth here. She's still a deserving writer, and also a lovely, lovely lady who knows about wit, from what I've seen of her in interviews. That wit of hers is also present in her writing. Divergent is far from being a comedy, but there definitely are parts that can make the reader smile or chuckle.

Another aspect that sets this story apart from Twilight and the Hunger Games is its hero, who doesn't just follow the heroine around looking hot (although he does that too) and isn't just sacrificial and madly in love with the heroine for barely any reason (sorry to the HG lovers, but that's how I felt about Peeta). He and the heroine are alike on many levels, so much so that it's understandable why they're drawn to each other and the bond they have feels very genuine. But, most importantly, the hero has his own story independent of Tris. Roth had begun writing Divergent from his POV and changed her mind afterwards, so that probably contributed a lot to the fact that he isn't just "the love interest" but an actual full-fledged character of his own.
Their romance also isn't so focused on that it overshadows the other aspects of the story. They do have fights and break ups and make ups, but these fights are the result of differing opinions they have with relation to how they should adress the reigning political problems. They are a natural extension of the central conflict, fights that they would have even if they were just friends, so it's not just romantic drama for the sake of romantic drama.

I'll finish this much more long-winded that I'd expected speech with a statement of the obviously obvious: I really liked this series.
The beginning of the first book is a little flat, though, I agree. I think I even have picked the book up, read the first pages, put it back down and forgot about it once when I was looking for a new read in the library. Later, I decided to come back and buy it because I heard about the upcoming movie (and because I'm really not finding any YA literature with interesting stories lately, is it just me or...?). I cruised through the first book a little dispassionately at first, but something about it just made me want to keep reading. Then the heroine grew on me and I reached the part at the end where the action suddeny increased ten fold, hooking me. Then I still wasn't completely sure, but I bought the second anyway and that, Insurgent, did it for me. It starts right where the previous book left without rehashing what previously happened and it's just so fast-paced and captivating that I just knew for sure that I'd read the series 'till the end by then. And what an end! I won't spoil, but I have never been touched by a book's ending the way I was touched by this one's.

If you like philosophy, romance, suspense and action-packed teenager stories, you should really give this one a try!

 

Nice one. I hear ya loud and clear though. I just don't think it's fair to judge all writing as good or bad based on "the classics" or "canon" literature. Literature evolves. Sure there are elements of quality that would remain, but style and content change with the culture of the people.

Granted, I mostly read the classics, myself--and for good reason--I can't say modern lit pales in comparison on the grounds that it's different or doesn't do what "canon" literature did. It's like the argument that poetry should be a social/public affair, that is, one has to write something that everyone can relate to, something meaningful to society. In 18c Britain, this was the though, and writing inward was not good poetry... Clearly the romantics came through and smashed that idea.

Sorry, I digress. I'm just sayin' though lol

 

Yeah I'm with you on the dystopia BookLover. But as far as Divergent goes...having already read the Hunger Games series I can't say I'm all that interested in reading the book or seeing the movie. Especially having read other deeper, darker dystopic novels like George Orwell's 1984 though I'm not sure that counts. I don't want to put anything that might be a spoiler on here for anyone who hasn't read the HG series or 1984...but...does Divergent have morphine addicted characters in it? Does it have a face cage with hungry, ravenous sewer rats in it? Divergent just doesn't look interesting to me. Seems like a lesser version of the former.

 

But it isn't a lesser version of the former. I've read both. Divergent and the Hunger Games have nothing in common except that they're both YA dystopians with a strong insurgent female MC.

Is just that really enough to call them "very similar"?

 

ILoveWords, you make a lot of good points in your post. I tried to quote ya but for some reason it won't let me. As an HG fan I feel I have to try to explain some of things you mentioned about the story and characters. I haven't read Divergent nor have I seen the movie but it might just be worth a try after all. Who knows? I mean...I was able to get through most of the 'Uglies' series.

You said you thought Suzanne Collins didn't delve enough into psychological and sociological aspect of what was happening in the HG universe. To a certain point I have to agree with you on this. Especially when it came to Peeta's announcement of Katniss's supposed pregnancy and the people of the Capitol's obliviousness to the suffering of the people in the districts. How can they not notice? How can Katniss so easily dispose of and demonize the career tributes of the other districts? If Suzanne had gone into as much detail about all of that as would have been necessary to explain it all the books would have been huge. On par with the Game of Thrones novels. In the story it was noted more than once that the districts, even though they didn't all live that far from one another, knew next to nothing about one another other than what was learned about each district during the games. 12: Coal mining. 11: agriculture and so on and so forth. Districts 1 and 2 if I remember correctly were Careers for a reason. It was from these districts that the Capitol got their wardens and jewels and such and as two of the most important areas they were given special treatment. Like the mountain fortress in district 2 ( I think), and better fed, better equipped tributes. Katniss's animosity towards these districts stems from years of watching tributes from her district and others die at the hands of these two districts who, even after the rebellion started stayed on the side of the Capitol. That and in both of her games it was always the same thing. She and whoever she happened to be teamed up with hiding from the Careers from these districts. If the first time you have any contact with someone who looks like they eat better and live better than you they're trying to hunt you down and kill you, I imagine you wouldn't be so quick to want to be friends either.

As for the people of the Capitol...well...they've been living the way they've been living for a long time. Think about today's society. Think about how Plutarch described the Capitol. Panem et circuses. Bread and Circuses. Maybe when the games first started all those years ago they would have had some moral scruples and not put pregnant women into the arena. Or 12 year old kids for that matter. But this is several..several decades later. They're used to a life of ease. The Hunger Games...once a solemn ritual to impress upon the districts the power of the Capitol has turned into not just a ritual but entertainment for the citizens. A way to keep both the districts and the Capitol people in line. Yes, they gasped and were generally aghast at Katniss being put in when she was supposed to be pregnant but it's not ultimately the average citizens decision who gets put in and who doesn't. The Quarter Quell happened the way it happened because of President Snow. Not because the people of the Capitol are all evil and unfeeling. I hated them at first honestly..but by the end of the book I realized they were just as oppressed as the districts were albeit in a different way. :/

Katniss's personality does come off a bit rough in the beginning, but you have to understand her whole entire life since her father died has been about survival. She was solely responsible for making sure her family ate and after her first games was suddenly responsible for the lives of a lot of other people. She grew up just like all the other characters in the book as it was so eloquently put by Orwell, with her face under the boot of the government controlling her. So her being sort of cold and robotic I think is justified. When your whole life is wrapped up in making sure you don't die from starvation or a knife in your back, compassion tends to take a back seat.

Suzanne Collins had a lot to say in her books. Stuff that if you weren't really searching for the meaning you might miss. Like the way the districts and the Capitol were all set up. The districts were the slaves of the wealthy elite in the Capitol. And the wealthy elite of the Capitol are the fat, lazy, easily herded sheep of the few in power. It's a throw back to the hierarchy of the Roman empire and a sort of metaphor for the way we live today. One nation absorbing the resources of another smaller, weaker nation. The bigger nation controlling it's own population with generic entertainment. Crappy movies, video games...etc...etc. So like Divergent it too has something to say. ^^

Last but not least, as far as the love relationship between Peeta and Katniss and Gale, well I dunno. Not sure how to defend that one. lol I liked that Peeta wasn't the typical love interest. He wasn't the manly, sexy interesting guy y'know? He wasn't...Finnick O'dair. lol He was just Peeta a bakers boy who liked to paint and decorate cakes. Yeah his crush on Katniss was a little odd seeing as how they'd never really talked to one another till the games but it just goes to show things don't always work out the way we think. Just cuz something looks like a sure thing doesn't mean it is and if it was that'd be hella boring don't you think?

 

Keep in mind, this is all subjective (except the part about writing quality, but more on that in a minute), and you are free to like whatever you like.

However, there are undeniable similarities. In addition to the things you pointed out (YA, Dystopian, strong insurgent female MC), they are both written in first person present tense; they both feature futuristic, youth lead revolts, and they both feature a society where people are divided and ranked.

They do tell two totally different stories, but many people seem to agree that Divergent is less than effective at telling what could be a good story. I happened to go to B&N recently and I read through a couple of chapters... the writing in Divergent is flat and repetitive. The details Roth chose to give are less than compelling. The characters felt like caricatures to me. The story set up was predictable. It is an easy, seemingly uninspired read, rife with moments of melodrama.

The Hunger Games is not without it's flaws, but from a purely mechanical standpoint, it is more effective at telling it's story, writing from the inside out. Divergent has a "reporty" feel.

 

If you click on 'quote' you have to then click on 'load quotes', it's the multi-quote function. If you click on 'reply' that post will be quoted.

 

What is the multi quote function?

 

'Like' '+Quote' 'Reply'
The one in the middle. It even pulls quotes from other threads. So you go along reading and hit that on anything you want to eventually reply to.

When you are ready to reply, you'll see "insert quotes" on the left lower side of the reply box. Click on that and all the tagged quotes will show up for you to select from. Select the ones you want and hit, insert these quotes.

 

If the careers were using their better condition to oppress people from poorer districts just because they can, I'd think this reasoning would justify the demonization, but the thing is that these districts win year after year only because they want to survive... they're trying to hunt you down and kill you, but you're trying to hunt them down and kill them too, these are the rules, they aren't any worse than you are. They just happen to have an advantage because they're in better shape, but they're not responsible for being a richer district, the Capitol is.
I also thought it made sense that they'd remain on the Capitol's side the longest after the revolution started. They know that the Capitol is powerful enough to annihilate them if they disobey (because of district Thirteen) and they have a better standard of life so they have less of an incentive to revolt. The other districts who were excruciatingly poor simply had nothing to lose anymore. And people with nothing to lose are a totally different breed of humans characterized by an ability to accomplish the craziest feats. :/

It's sad that Katniss was able to look down upon them and kill them without feeling anything although she would probably have acted the exact same way they did if she'd been in their shoes...

The Capitol, oppressed like the districts... I didn't see it that way... That's surely an interesting way to look at it, Geminie_Genie ( I like the name by the way! ^^).
I wonder what it would have cost the Capitol citizens to protest against the games, though. Even if this has been their way of life for a long time, they have expressed being touched greatly by the deaths so they weren't calloused despite the years. Why not boycot the games instead of participating in them by being sponsors and placing bets like they did?

That would surely explain her not having any compassion for the animals she kills. We would cringe and feel bad for the pray, but she's gotta eat so her going 'whatever' makes sense. But why would she lack compassion for fellow humans, too? If she has had to deal with the loss of her father, shouldn't that make her more, not less, aware of what it must be like for other people to lose their family member who she shot dead/threw tracker jackers on/let be tortured and devoured by crazy mutts for a whole night? She barely dedicated these poor people any thoughts. She would talk about it for a paragraph and then just move on...

You're right, it does certainly have a worthwhile message to its readers. Though I would have liked more page space to be dedicated to getting that sociological point across. I wasn't expecting a thorough essay on these things, but just weaving it in the story subtly. Having Katniss concentrate a little less on how pretty she looked in Senna's dresses and a little more on where they come from (it would have been a nice social commentary on our current globalized world wherein we look at pretty shoes and see pretty shoes, not the poor Asian kids who couldn't go to school because they had to make them). Or having her blame the Capitol instead of blaming her rival kids in the arena, as a parallel to the conflicts in some poor countries where armed forced fight each other to death with weapons that richer countries provide them with because they have something to gain from keeping poorer countries at war. That kind of thing.

Um I don't really understand how the fact that everything isn't what it seems relates to Peeta's crush? I agree that things are less boring if everything isn't what it looks like it is, but I'd expect that reasoning to be used to explain why plot twists are cool, not why it's okay for the main romantic relationship in the book to be a slightly random school crush that inexplicably blossoms into passionate, sacrificial love.

But I totally agree that Peeta being a simple baker and not some sparkly Adonis was a positive thing. Katniss was usually the one who protected him also, which was a huge breath of fresh air out of the pool of delicate damsel in distress heroines. Tris is not helplessly delicate, but Divergent is still a little more traditional in that area than the HG is.

 

Oh, yes, sure, sure! I hope it didn't seem like I was imposing my ideas. It's just how I personally feel about that book... ^^'
I've seen many people dismiss this book like it's popular trash, assuming that it's some cliché rip off of Potter and the HG and, as a person who has actually read it, I can't help but react to how wrong that assumption is. It's just a pity that the beginning of this series isn't powerful enough to keep the readers interested until the second book, knowing that the second book is better than the first and maybe they're missing out on a story they would like if they didn't drop out so quickly. I just want to counterbalance all the negative things people might say or assume and encourage people to pick up what I believe to be a wonderful series.

Yes, it's true, but these similarities remain in very fundamental territory. It would probably not be very difficult to find other YA novels that fit this basic description.

I'm intrigued by your assertion that writing quality is not subjective. Don't we all have different criteria when it comes to that which constitutes good writing?
What do you mean by "writing from the inside out"?

It's funny how you describe Roth's writing as being the exact opposite of what I consider it to be. And the effectivity. And the characters. And... everything else. It illustrates your point on subjectivity pretty well.

 

Woooooooooooooah, that's legit! I never knew this...

 

Oh most definitely. They are on the fundamental, level, but deep enough to draw comparisons based on how closely to each other he two came out. People will always draw comparisons. People still compare James Cameron's Avatar to Pocahontas (primarily the Disney version)

And yeah sorry, I was a little unclear about that. When I say the quality is bad I mean Roth uses dull repetitive language, little more than "I do this ... I do that ... random interjection of thought ... someone near me does this ... uninteresting detail here ... I do this ... I feel this ... interior question or memory here. Something happens ... etc." That is reporting style. It's repetitive, and plain, and I never sense the tension of the moment because the narrator is simply commenting.

If you look at the words on the page unbiasedly, you'll notice more variety in Collins's syntax. This is not a matter of opinion but unbiased analysis of the text based on sections I've read with my own eyes. This part has nothing to do with plot, or character, or preference for language. I would have no problem with Roth's writing, but it calls attention to itself by never picking up. As a reader, I generally expect certain turns in the flow of words. It's an element of craft to employ a combination of short and long sentences with varying constructions. Of course you have to stay true to the pov you're in, but that brings my to my other point.

When I say writing from the inside out, I mean that, as a first person pov, we should spend more time in the characters head experiencing things, thinking things, not commentating every minute action. If you look at texts from both Divergent and The Hunger Games. You'll notice that Katniss doesn't spend so much time telling us about her actions. Instead she gives us what she's seeing and hearing and thinking , spacing out moments of "I do..." with chains of thoughts or connections. Really most of it is in the sentence construction, but you've got to move the consciousness into the MC to look outward. We've got to experience the story as the MC, not from. That last line is more subjective, but the method to accomplishing it is simple technique that to make writing engaging.

It's the same in third person. If you want to be engaging, focus less on "he did this... then he did that... he felt this way about it... he thought... something happened... he reacted." That's nothing but reporting. And that is what I'm getting at is not very subjective. It's not strong writing if it can't break out of that mode.

How we experience it as effective or ineffective is more subjective, though.

 

Katniss wasn't at all callous about killing the careers or any of the other tributes. I agree with what you say about it being unfair that she seems to be so against them but if Katniss can be put on the spot for being unfeeling then so can every tribute that's ever been in the games. Haymitch said it best. The previous winners of the games didn't win by being compassionate. It's a survival situation. People are killing and being killed. There wasn't much time devoted to the subject in the first book but the second really drives the point home when it describes Katniss's nightmares...seeing the faces of the people she killed night after night. She wasn't even the one responsible for Rue's death, yet it was a thought that came back to her on more than one occasion. She was haunted by her experiences. I think Suzanne did a good job of showing that. How come Katniss always gets so much heat? It was Gale if you remember who helped design the fire bombs that killed Prim. Granted..it was President Coin who made the drop but still. If she's cold and callous..so is everyone else. At least her kills weren't driven by a mad desire for power.

As concerns the dresses Cinna made for her and her admiring herself, she's human as are we all. lol If I had a top notch fashion designer making me clothes and getting me ready for camera debuts all the time I'd be impressed with how I looked too. It was never meant to be anything she focused on heavily though. Cinna was her friend and she enjoyed his designs. There were plenty of moments if you remember where she resented all the fashion-y stuff too. It wasn't anything that stopped her from reflecting on her past at all. It was just an extra something.

And her fathers death was a major reason for one of her more heroic moments in the book, during the siege in District 2. Remember that plan? They set off bombs to cause an avalanche that would seal everyone in. The only way out was a rail car out the front of the mountain. That was Gale's plan. Not hers. Grant it she didn't speak up and try to stop it but how could she have? She was a pawn before and a pawn then as the 'Mockingjay'. The avalanche reminded her of what happened to her father. They were doing the same thing to District 2. Burying them alive..cutting off their oxygen. She was hardly callous about any of that stuff ILoveWords. Her personality was stiff and grating because that was the person the events of her life shaped her into.

 

Avatar is really Pocahontas in space, though. The moral teaching is exactly the same, the story’s set up is the same, the main character’s personalities are very close, it’s mostly the incredible visual aspect that makes Avatar a worthwhile watch even when you’ve seen Pocahontas, but I understand a lot better that people say about both stories that they resemble each other a lot.

I do however have more of an issue with people saying this about the HG and Divergent because, as you said, these two series tell very different stories with very different philosophical teachings despite their similarities. That’s the point I wanted to make. Just comparing the two, as long as it doesn’t amount to the conclusion that they are the same, is completely fine by me. I just want to prevent people who haven’t read Divergent from giving the book a pass because of the erroneous idea that both are so alike it can’t be interesting to read one if you’ve already read the other.

Putting the first chapter of HG and of Divergent side by side, it does jump to the eye how true it is that Veronica Roth’s writing is more choppy and the sentence structure she uses are much less varied than Suzanne Collin’s. When you spoke about repetitiveness, I interpreted it as a criticism of the vocabulary and figures of style Roth uses (which I still think are rich and vividly descriptive in the Divergent series, more so in its later installments than the first), rather than purely the syntax. I think I was more oblivious to Divergent’s more repetitive sentence structures because it’s a writing style that I eventually grew so accustomed to that it became transparent farther down the road, but I understand how this difference can be a bother at first if one begins reading Divergent right after finishing the HG.

This more matter-a-fact narration doesn’t necessarily have to be interpreted as a dispassionate reporting of facts, though. When I was reading the Divergent series, I did feel like a lot of attention was directed at her thoughts and what she sees and hears. She less often says “I hear” or “I think”, but that could come across as redundant (depending on personal preference) because she wouldn’t be reporting these facts if she hadn’t perceived them first – it’s a given. Every time an action or a certain detail about something or someone is pointed out, it’s pointed out by Tris herself, so it says something about her, something about what she, personally, finds important. She does not comment every minute actions, she comments actions that furthers the story or develops the characters and these commentaries are a look inside her mind; her thoughts; her experiences. Statements of plain actions are spread out between thoughts and memories in Divergent, too, Roth just writes a little less extensively about these thoughts the same way she’s less extensive about the rest (actions and physical descriptions). Her prose is just more succinct overall.

The “random interjections of thoughts” and “uninteresting details” were often things that everybody would think, but wouldn’t say out loud. I can see how it can be boring to some readers because, well everybody thinks that, nothing special there, but at the same time, it gave Tris a very, very relatable quality. And it's generally agreed upon that readers don't even need to like the person you're writing about, what matters the most is whether they can relate to the character or not. It plays a major role in engaging them into the story. The way she narrates is part of her character: a normal, random teenager girl who didn’t ask to be a superhero but was thrust into that role by circumstances. She’s to the point in her narration as well as her actions.

It's true that, before it grew on me, there were moments in the first book when the writing felt empty to some extent, like it was a little too detached, but at other times the simple and succinct directness of Roth's writing also increased the poignancy of the message.
You know, it’s kind of like philosophical quotes. They’re just sentences, short and simple ones usually, but what they say can be so deep that you remain thinking about their message in silence for a while after having read them, touched by the fact that so little can contain so much. There’s something poetic about touching messages delivered in the form of contrastingly simple and repetitive writing, something that can make it just as strong as long-winded metaphors and ever-changing sentence structures. That’s why I don’t think Roth’s writing type is necessarily the result of an inability to break out of it, it can be a deliberate stylistic choice.

But then again, once you take the message into account, things become more subjective. If Divergent has philosophical insights that you've already heard countless times before, it's likely to be less touching to you than to someone who hasn't. However, maybe it isn't completely right to gauge the writing quality just based on how much the writer alternates between syntactic compositions, like the writing is not tied to the message it carries, because in truth both actually are tied. When speaking about the writing techniques that make writing “strong” or “engaging”, it boils down to whether it’s effective or not, which, we agree, depends on the reader.

 

I don’t mind her admiring herself, I just don’t remember her pausing for a moment and reflecting upon where it’s all coming from. She only did it when talking about their squandering of food a couple of times. When she had an issue with the fashion, it was either because it wasn’t comfortable or because she felt like it didn’t resemble her, but it barely ever went any deeper than issues a middle class teenager girl would have. She’s not a middle class teen girl like most of her readers though, she’s seen the horrors of poverty first hand, so it seemed reasonable to me to expect of her that she’d have a propensity towards reflecting over all the work that goes into the robes of gold and diamond she was being adorned with.

Gale just had a very “ends justifies the means” perception of things, it’s a philosophy that’s not necessarily paired with a lack of empathy, especially given that he even said at some point that he would sacrifice himself the same way he sacrifices other people, if I remember well. We know what his moral views were, but we don’t know how he felt about these views.

Katniss, on the other hand, gets the most heat because she’s the MC, the main POV. Unlike with other characters, we witness all of her thought processes right then and there as the horror happens. And what we see is her plotting the death of the girl who made a fire next to her in the first Games because the girl was being “stupid” and didn’t just suck up the harsh conditions of the arena without any empathetic thought, it's her getting ready to kill Peeta as soon as she finds him with the careers although the guy is limping, bloody and bruised (and is thus obviously just trying to survive after having been spared by the careers who are just using him) and her actually trying to kill Peeta (and the rest) with the tracker jacker nest which she ultimately killed Glimmer with only to comment on how ugly the trackerjacker attack has made her (Glimmer) when she passes by her corpse, not the fact that she (Katniss) caused that attack which took Glimmer’s life.


I’m not reproaching her killing people, that's the game and compassion should be cast aside, but you'd expect her to struggle a little more with following that guideline in her thought processes, for it goes against our innate human reflexes of empathy. She was particularly touched by Rue’s death, but Rue was a friend and compassion shouldn’t extend only to the people who she personally knows or like. Same thing with the avalanche, it shouldn’t touch her just because it reminds her of somebody she personally loves (her father) but simply because there are people dying a horrific death there.

When she later thinks of Bonnie and Twill not making it to district thirteen also, she’s just like “I’m not seeing them here. Died in the woods, I guess” and moves on. That’s how we react when we hear about thousands of people dying in wars far away from us, granted, but these are people who she talked to, people who helped her, they were there before her once, interacting with her, and now they’re likely laying cold somewhere, starved out or attacked by some animal never to wake again forever. And “I guess they’re dead” is all she has to say.


She spoke about nightmares, but I found it to be so at odds with the reactions she had had on the spot when she was doing the killings that it was difficult for me to be convinced that she was really so traumatized. Especially when she went about trying to kill people again in the quarter quell without that much hesitation (she was the first to attempt a killing in the second games and had murderous thoughts towards Johanna too although Johanna had never really done anything wrong. Katniss just… didn’t like her and mentioned killing her “just to shut her up”). During her mission out with Boggs (22nd chapter of Mockingjay), she even kills a random woman with a shot through the heart and then she moves on to talk about how nice it would be to hole up in her classy apartment like she didn’t just murder an innocent person. She seems to suffer PTSD at some points, but some of her other behavior is just not consistent with that.

 

Ugh, just saying my little sister of ten was caught with that book and I immediately snatched it away from her (and just in time too holy crapola) Looking back, that book never caught more than mild interest for me, and that's saying a lot considering that i have read The Hunger Games, and City of Bones. Compared to those, in my view, it's a bad mix of melodrama, attempted conflict, and a lot of sexual references. Not something i look for in the YA market.

However, at the end of City of Bones, i got so grossed out by one of the reveals that i had to put it down. I will not do spoilers, but OMG! For those of you who know that I'm talking about, I'm sure you get why readers don't like reading about that subject. *eeeeeeeewwwwwww*

Also, has anyone here read The Giver? Divergent seems to go off of that a bit. Or was it City of Ember... I forget but those two books are a lot older and both have a job picking system i beleive.

 

Well, @ILoveWords , as the saying goes, to each his own, I suppose. I think you've formulated a well reasoned, well;structured argument. If you're point is to prove it is all a matter of subjectivity, depending on the reader's response to many many different factors, I concede. You do so flawlessly. You've not listed a thing about the book (aside from it getting better as the series progresses) that I didn't count on, but based on my reading experience, I think I've seen it done better.

At the end of the day, those who enjoy the books will do so for whatever reasons, and I'm not arguing that. Nor am I arguing author intent. But I can recognize, in hindsight, when something I liked or disliked was bad or good. This whole discussion reminds me of the Inheritance series, by Christopher Paolini. My friend introduced me to Eragon when I was in sixth grade. I opened in and instinctively knew something was off, so I put it up. But when Summer came and I needed something to read, I picked the book up and trudged on. As I progressed, I either got used to the writing or into the story, or both. By the end, I was hooked into the series. I own all 4 books, and it wasn't until after I had finished the last one that I first heard it was generally considered awful pretentious writing...

Shocked and unable to understand the criticism, I disagreed. Then I read some of the reasons people pointed out. And I learned more about good writing. And when I went back to study up, I found myself bothered by some of the writing too, enough to make me realize, "yeah, this isn't all that well-written."

So I suppose exposure is a factor in this. The more you know and are exposed, the easier it is to see and recognize good and bad. The same goes for movies and tv shows now. I've liked a lot of awful stuff. And yet it was "perfect" for a certain audience. Divergent is one of those cases wherein the book and story are enjoyable enough, but the technique is arguable at best. We'll have to give it some time to see if it catches fire. It reminds me a lot of another book I read, that got bad reviews for varying reasons. It was Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola. He knew what he was trying to do, create a social "scientific" experiment in novel form. I kinda bought into it, I could see his technique, but it didn't catch on, and the logic in his argument was flawed. But now, all these years later, it is worth discussing in lit. classes for this reason or that.

 

Isn't 'good writing' really a matter of subjectivity too?... You mentioned above that people who enjoy a particular story are often confused and offended by bad reviews it gets because it's something they themselves don't really see a problem with. Lots of people think 50 Shades is good writing. People think Twilight is good writing. Some people might look at classics written by Hemingway and Orwell and think they're boring. I don't think it necessarily makes that person ignorant of what good writing is. It just means they like what they like. And if it's not that...maybe they just don't mind being ignorant. Reading and writing is supposed to be about fun. ^^ Not whose on the highest level.

ILoveWords has good reasons she pointed out as to why she thinks Divergent is a good story. She pointed out a lot of things in HG that could have been touched on a bit more. ^(^.^)^ I enjoyed the whole debate hugely. lol

'Well-written' to me is really up to the person doing the reading. At the end of the day a good book is one you walked away from really feeling something. And if ILoveWords got something Divergent that she didn't get from another book or series...then it was good.