Key themes
- Identity and the faction system — the danger of reducing people to one value
- Choosing who to become when the choice is coerced
- Loyalty and its limits — to family, to faction, to truth
About this book
A society sorted into factions and a girl who fits none of them; fast-paced YA dystopia.
Published in 2011, Divergent was the debut novel of 22-year-old Veronica Roth and immediately became a global bestseller. It spawned two sequels and a film franchise.
Discussion questions
- The faction system assigns each person to a community defined by a single value. What is Roth saying about identity through this premise — and what does Tris's Divergence reveal?
- Tris leaves her family's faction of Abnegation for Dauntless. How does Roth develop the tension between the person you were raised to be and the person you choose to become?
- The Dauntless initiation is violent and dangerous. What is Roth saying about the relationship between courage, cruelty and group identity?
- Divergent is often compared to The Hunger Games. What do the two novels share — and where does each do something the other cannot?
- The novel was enormously popular with YA readers. What does the faction premise offer young readers that adult fiction typically does not — and what does it simplify?
Get the book
Links open an Amazon search. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Read together or read next
Books that make a good pairing or natural follow-up.
This is a set text
Divergent appears on the following curriculum reading lists.
Reading it with your group?
Get Divergent
As an Amazon Associate and Bookshop.org affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases.