The Negative View Of The Factionless In Roth's Divergent

You make a great point that those who don’t pass initiation end up functionless. Those who aren’t “standard” belong where the rest of the non-standard people go. You’re example is also very relevant and definitely portrays the negative view of the factionless. My question is, wouldn’t those in the factionless actually belong to another unmade faction? There has to be personality types to match each of the factionless as well. I wonder if those who created the system in Abnegation decided that only the five factions they created were significant for a utopian society. The different views of the factionless are especially interesting considering how intelligent those people are discovered to be in Insurgent. In chapter six of Divergent, two of the initiates from Dauntless have a conversation about the factionless. One of the initiates exclaims, “I’d rather be factionless than dead!” (Divergent 54). Then Tris thinks, “I would rather be dead than empty, like the factionless,” (Divergent 54). However, in Roth’s novel, Insurgent, we learn that the factionless has a headquarters where Four’s (Tobias) mother, “Evelyn”, lives. As …show more content…
We may not live in a fully dystopian society, but we certainly do rely on tests to “belong” to categories or groups of people. Though we have similar tests in place, a portion of our society also embraces self-identity and ethnicity. Our society often accepts that there are different groups of people and tries to work collaboratively throughout while others disagree. Just like Roth’s novels, this is what leads to war and destruction. Those who are unaccepting and power hungry are also those who cause turmoil and war. If the world was in full agreement of total equality, our society might not have some of the dystopian elements that Roth creates in the Divergent