Amazon.com Review
A Q&A with Author Veronica Roth
Q: What advice would you offer to young aspiring writers, who long to live a success story like your own?
Roth: One piece of advice I have is: Want something else more than success. Success is a lovely thing, but your desire to say something, your worth, and your identity shouldnāt rely on it, because itās not guaranteed and itās not permanent and itās not sufficient. So work hard, fall in love with the writingāthe characters, the story, the words, the themesāand make sure that you are who you are regardless of your life circumstances. That way, when the good things come, they donāt warp you, and when the bad things hit you, you donāt fall apart.
Q: Youāre a young author--is it your current adult perspective or not-so-recent teenage perspective that brought about the factions in the development of this story? Do you think that teens or adults are more likely to fit into categories in our current society?
Roth: Other aspects of my identity have more to do with the factions than my age. The faction system reflects my beliefs about human natureāthat we can make even something as well-intentioned as virtue into an idol, or an evil thing. And that virtue as an end unto itself is worthless to us. I did spend a large portion of my adolescence trying to be as āgoodā as possible so that I could prove my worth to the people around me, to myself, to God, to everyone. Itās only now that Iām a little older that I realize I am unable to be truly āgoodā and that itās my reasons for striving after virtue that need adjustment more than my behavior. In a sense, Divergent is me writing through that realizationāeveryone in Beatriceās society believes that virtue is the end, the answer. I think thatās a little twisted.
I think we all secretly love and hate categoriesālove to get a firm hold on our identities, but hate to be confinedāand I never loved and hated them more than when I was a teenager. That said: Though we hear a lot about high school cliques, I believe that adults categorize each other just as often, just in subtler ways. It is a dangerous tendency of ours. And it begins in adolescence.
Q: If you could add one more faction to the world within Divergent, what would it be?
Roth: I tried to construct the factions so that they spanned a wide range of virtues. Abnegation, for example, includes five of the traditional āseven heavenly virtues:ā chastity, temperance, charity, patience, and humility. That said, it would be interesting to have a faction centered on industriousness, in which diligence and hard work are valued most, and laziness is not allowed. They would be in constant motion, and would probably be happy to take over for the factionless. And hard-working people can certainly take their work too far, as all the factions do with their respective virtues. Iām not sure what they would wear, though. Overalls, probably.
Q: What do you think are the advantages, if any, to the society youāve created in Divergent?
Roth: All the advantages I see only seem like advantages to me because I live in our current society. For example, the members of their society donāt focus on certain things: race, religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, etc. I mean, a world in which you look different from the majority and no one minds? That sounds good to me. But when I think about it more, I realize that theyāre doing the exact same thing we do, but with different criteria by which to distinguish ourselves from others. Instead of your skin color, itās the color of your shirt that people assess, or the results of your aptitude test. Same problem, different system.
Q: What book are you currently reading and how has it changed you, if at all?
Roth: I recently finished Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma, which I would call ācontemporary with a paranormal twist,ā or something to that effect. Itās about a girl whose sister has a powerful kind of magnetism within the confines of a particular town, and how their love for each other breaks some things apart and puts other things back together. It was refreshing to read a young adult book that is about sisterhood instead of romance. Itās one of those books that makes you love a character and then hate a character and then love them againāthat shows you that people arenāt all good or all bad, but somewhere in between. Imaginary Girls gave me a lot to think about, and the writing was lovely, which I always love to see.