Parallels Between The Divergent Series And The World We Live In
Before I begin, let me say right up front that this article may be controversial, depending on your current perspective and willingness to consider that life may not be as you see it.
I should also mention that if you’re not familiar with the Divergent series, this article may contain spoilers, which I’ve tried to minimize, but it’s impossible to discuss what I want without touching on some of the key themes of these three movies.
That being said, let me get started.
As I’ve written about elsewhere, one of my favourite movies is Divergent, and even though I was never that keen on the second (Insurgent) and third (Allegiant) ones in the series, I thought I’d give them another chance recently – and to be fair, they’re better than I remember them being.
But what struck me was how this overall story mirrors what’s happening in the world today.
The Divergent series is described as dystopian (it’s set in a post-war Chicago), but we’re clearly not there – yet (since we haven’t experienced a global war that has killed almost all of humanity).
Other than that though, the parallels are plentiful.
The most obvious aspect, to me, is the name of the groups – factions.
I don’t know whether I’m the only one who reacts this way, but the word “faction” suggests to me division, not community.
While the word can mean a group having a common goal, I would suspect it’s another meaning, “combined disorderly opposition to established authority; turbulence; tumult; dissension”, that is more common.
Near the beginning of the first movie, there is a claim that the faction system – five groups with distinct attributes – work together in harmony to maintain peace and to prosper. (There is also a sixth group, not known as a faction but the factionless, who are people who do not belong anywhere.)
And right away, you can see how this reflects current society – there is almost always a group of people who are treated as second-class citizens, if they are classed as citizens at all.
There is actually a seventh type of person, but I’ll get to that later.
As the movie develops, you begin to witness power struggles between some of the factions, a situation instigated by some of the people in authority.
Which brings me to the next point – authority.
A lot of the first two movies focus on the people who appear to be visibly in control.
These are, for want of a better word, the city’s government.
And they will do whatever they can, regardless of whether it’s right or not, to keep control.
They may say it’s for the common good, but their motives are suspect, to me, from the word go.
Like many people in authority, they try to hide the source of the real problems by causing dissent and division.
It’s a beautiful strategy that works time and time again, both in the movies and in real life. You only have to look at the many divisions in society today – white vs, non-white, invader vs. indigenous people, Democrat vs. Republicans (or whatever political parties exist in your country), believers vs. non-believers, and, to a lesser degree, because it’s getting too close to the truth, rich vs. poor.
There are other divisions, of course, but those are enough to make the point.
By getting people to fight against each other, blaming other groups for their own problems, the people ostensibly running the show very cleverly misdirect your attention away from them.
And you can see how effective all this indoctrination is when friends and family members turn on each other. It happens in these movies, and it certainly happens in the real world today.
Things become more interesting though, in the third movie, Allegiant, where you become aware that the people you thought were in charge, in the city, are far from being the leaders anybody thought they were.
And that’s because there is an unseen group, outside the regular society, who are actually in control.
Most (or even all?) of the people within the city don’t even know they exist, never mind who they are or what they do.
In real life, these are the people who are often called the elite (a term I dislike intensely because it implies they are better than everybody else, when in fact they simply have more money – a LOT more money, but the point remains).
And whether you want to admit it or not, these people have a plan, and have had for generations, because they are not just families, they are dynasties.
So just like the post-war Chicago in which the movies are mainly set, we are their experiment – they create the environment (e.g. by controlling money), they pull the strings, and they see what happens, making corrections as they go with their ultimate goal ever in sight.
But for the most part, their actions are as unseen as a magician’s sleight of hand.
You also get a glimpse of life in the ultimate lockdown – unable to leave the confines of their walled-in city. Again, the reason given is for “public safety”, but in reality, it’s to keep the people who are ultimately in control safe, from both detection and harm).
Another common theme is the illusion that voting (or changing those who you think are in control) makes a difference – what does it matter who the visible leaders are if they too are having their strings pulled by people you don’t even know exist?
Does changing the puppets you see in any way alter the fact that it’s still the same puppet master behind the scenes?
Next, there is the issue of digital ids, implanted in your body. This may seem futuristic, but even now, people are having chips injected into them, but it’s not mandatory – yet. In the movie, this digital id is used to authorize access to certain locations, but what’s the likelihood of it stopping there?
And then there is surveillance – in Allegiant, it becomes clear that pretty much everybody is watched (or, at least, is capable of being watched) wherever they go.
In the real world, today, contact tracing as they like to call it, is another hot topic, and again, they say it’s for the common good, but even if you don’t think you are going to be committing any crimes any time soon, do you really want people with authority over you knowing your every move, every person you meet, 24 x 7?
The third movie also follows the two main characters as they begin to peer behind the curtain, and it culminates with them awakening the rest of the population (within the city) to the reality of their lives.
(It’s also worth noting that those in charge – both the visible and invisible – appear to have no qualms about using violence to achieve what they want, including mass murder. Sound familiar?)
Which brings me to the seventh type of person I mentioned earlier, the ones called divergents, the prime example of whom is the series’ main heroine. These divergents are people who fit into more than one of the five factions, and the more of these groupings they fit into, the more divergent they are.
These people are deemed a threat to those in command because they are less easily controlled, and you could liken these divergents to those in real life who are often called “woke”.
“Woke” is, I think, a horrible term, although I see where it comes from, but it’s used to describe those who no longer believe the official narratives and are willing to spend time delving deeply to discover what may really be going on. By doing so, they risk everything, including the loss of friends, family, and even their own lives.
If you’re unsure whether what I’m describing here is specifically about some of the movie characters, or about people in the real world, then congratulations, you get it – because I’m talking about both.
And another key issue in the movie is, those in control are also threatened by those who question everything because they may expose the truth, something the authorities clearly do not want to happen.
Conclusion
It’s possible, of course, that you see these movies (or the books, which I still want to read) as nothing more than dystopian science fiction, but to me, there are clues to what is really going on, and where society is heading.
I have no idea whether the author of these books, Veronica Roth, had any of this in mind when she wrote them, but if not, it seems she was at the very least prescient.
Look at what is going on in the world – as I write this, we are still in the middle of what is being classified as a global pandemic, and if that weren’t enough, we now have riots, ostensibly sparked by the overreach of those in authority (doing exactly what I’ve been describing above).
I say “ostensibly” because it’s really difficult these days to separate fact from fiction – too many different groups have their own agenda, it’s technologically easier these days to fake whatever you want, and it has been proven there is a lot of misinformation (coming from every quarter, including “official” sources).
And maybe confusion is part of the plan – who knows?
What is clear is that a plan, whatever else it might contain, does exist. If you’re not convinced, I urge you to read up on the Georgia Guidestones. (To give you a clue, one of the goals is apparently to maintain a global population of less than half a billion people – and we’re currently approaching eight billion!)
This is, though, just a start – the more you come to understand about the world, the less you trust what your government tells you, and the closer you look at what’s going on, the more you’ll see these parallels in all sorts of other TV shows and movies, because let’s face it, it’s called “programming”‘ for a reason.
I could easily have chosen many other movies as the basis for this article – it’s just that I happened to be watching this series and it prompted the thoughts described above.
If you still believe that “your government would never do that to you”, then it is likely that all of the overt and subliminal messaging that is everywhere is working, and nowhere is this more concentrated than in the mainstream news where they are effectively telling you what to think.
It is, as they say, a rabbit hole that, once you start going down, has no bottom. Personally, I would rather try to get to the truth than be fed a never-ending series of comforting lies, but I know that not everybody is like that.
Anyway, if you haven’t watched the Divergent series yet, I highly recommend doing so and asking yourself whether you see what I see. If you do, you’ll start to see it elsewhere too, and if you don’t, you’ll probably just chalk me up as another conspiracy theorist (which is a term coined by the CIA to disparage those who do question the official story).
And finally, I cannot leave this article without including at least one quote from The Matrix, because, however often it has been used, it is, sadly, still incredibly true:
Additional Resources
These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:
