Many > One - Becoming Divergent

My reading journey began when I was in fourth grade. I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and it opened the entire world for me. I learned that books are magical things – they became my refuge from the banality of everyday life. I sought comfort, excitement, and even a little danger from books. They allowed me to escape to a thousand different worlds filled with laughter, love, and adventure. I was never the same after reading The Hunger Games, and with each new novel I added to my collection, I was changed.

The second book series I became enthralled with was Divergent by Veronica Roth, and that is the center of today’s morality discussion.

Divergent is a dystopian future novel set in a world divided into factions. Each of the five factions prizes one virtue over all others:

1. Abnegation prizes selflessness

2. Dauntless prizes bravery

3. Erudite prizes intelligence

4. Candor prizes honesty

5. Amity prizes peace

Every individual is distributed into these factions when they turn 16 and must choose which one they belong to. Anyone who does not fit into the mold of the factions is labeled as Divergent and very dangerous. The story follows the main character, Tris Prior, who was born in Abnegation, then chooses to become a Dauntless. However, Tris is actually Divergent, so she must hide this truth from the rest of the world to save her life. She befriends several other new Dauntless along the way and falls in love with her mentor, Four. I will let you read the rest of the book and discover the ending for yourself, and I highly recommend reading the entire series (I will link the book at the bottom of this post for your reading pleasure!). It has stood the test of time and is a book I still return to and read again and again.

The morality theme that has stuck with me from this book is the celebration of being a well-rounded individual. Though being Divergent is dangerous for Tris, it is what makes her special and the heroine of the story. Often on the path of cultivating virtue in our lives, it is easy to narrow our focus too much. For example, as a natural people pleaser, I have focused heavily on using this trait for good and being selfless towards others. However, it is easy to go too far down that road and become so selfless as to lose yourself. I struggled with this for many years, especially in high school – I perpetually fell on my own sword to “help” others. What I did not realize was that in doing so, I lost any sense of what I needed to fill my own cup, so I could continue to pour myself out for others. It wasn’t until my metaphorical cup ran dry that I realized I had strayed too far down the path of selflessness.

It was in the summer between my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college that I reread Divergent, and I came to the realization that virtues are not all or nothing. Balance and diversity are key to growing a healthy garden of virtues. On the journey of becoming a virtuous person, we must be wary of painting ourselves into the corner of a single virtue. There is one particular quote that has become tattooed on my soul, and this quote helped me to break the habit of cultivating a single virtue. In a world obsessed with laser focus on single virtues, Four says something very dangerous:

“I think we’ve made a mistake,” he says softly. “We’ve all started to put down the virtues of the other factions in the process of bolstering our own. I don’t want to do that. I want to be brave, and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest.”

In their society, he could have been killed for saying such a thing, but he still says it. This brings me back to my original moral foundation: the right thing versus the easy thing. (read more on this here). Four could do the easy thing and accept the world as it is, or he could do the right thing and speak out against the dangers of focusing on a single virtue. We also must choose to do the right thing instead of the easy thing. It is easy, sometimes deceptively so, to focus specifically on one key virtue, but it is better (and harder) to cultivate all virtues and become divergent in our own way. There are certainly seasons of focus on specific virtues, but we must be careful not to lose our other virtues in those seasons.

When I feel that I am becoming too focused on a specific virtue, I revisit this quote. Just like Four, I want to be well-rounded and virtuous in every aspect of life, not just one. Our morality cannot be locked into a single virtue because morality is not single-faceted. We must push ourselves to cultivate many virtues. After all, many virtues are greater than one.

Thank you for tuning into this week’s blog post! As always, please feel free to leave me a comment, question, or suggestion. I am happy to have a discussion about any of the topics I mentioned today. Subscribe to get more content like this delivered straight to your inbox!

Divergent by Veronica Roth on Amazon

Comments, Suggestions, & Questions