Technically, all the main character did in this chapter was get her hair cut by her mother, ride a bus to school, and creep on a group of teenagers from a hallway window. But I was still drawn into the book.
Seeing everything through the eyes of Beatrice, a 16-year-old dealing with a dystopian version of our future, provides both the necessary world-building to understand the setting and personal drama to empathize with the character.
I’m not used to reading books in first-person present. It’s actually pretty refreshing, like reading a stranger’s diary as they’re writing it. So just as Beatrice creeped on her classmates as they arrived to school, I’m creeping on her creeping on her classmates. It’s creepception.
Being privy to her innermost thoughts provides the reader with an understanding of her society. Even though the people in her world are divided into factions based on SAT words, since we’re seeing everything through the eyes of someone who’s lived her entire life in this standardized test-divided culture, we can easily comprehend the differences between each faction.
Beatrice’s family is part of Abnegation, a word I had to Google. It basically means that people in this faction must dress like the Amish and put everyone else’s well-being above their own. I would not be able to survive in this faction. If there were only one slice of cake and two of us, you can be sure you’re not the one getting that sugary goodness.
This first chapter was like a good thesis paragraph in an essay. It sets up the main character’s dilemma, which is having to take a test that will affect the rest of her life. That probably makes it easy for the target audience of this YA novel to relate, since most of them will be on their way or have already taken the SAT’s. Reading this book will probably also help those students since Iegit, all the factions names are words you’ll find in the SAT study manual.
While I found the first-person perspective to be strong for world-building, I found it a bit weak when it used the good ol’ look-at-yourself-in-the-mirror-to-describe-what-you-look-like method to explain Beatrice’s appearance. But it still got the job done.
I can already feel the undertones of having to deal with discrimination and having a divided society rather than a united one. I hope that the rest of the book delves deeper into dealing with these social issues, and doesn’t just revolve around a love triangle like most YA novels are wont to do.
I know this book is just the first in a bestselling series, so I have high hopes for it. The first chapter had me wanting to read the rest of the book, just so I could learn more about the dystopian society Beatrice lives in.
Have you guys read this series already, or watched the movie franchise it spawned? If so, what were your thoughts on the characters and social divide that’s inherent in that society?
Quotable Quote:
Beatrice understands the first rule of creeping: Know your target’s schedule.
I pause by a window in the E Wing and wait for the Dauntless to arrive. I do this every morning. At exactly 7:25
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Gwen thinks that it’s as close to magic as humans can get when a blank Word document is filled with groups of letters, and those groups of letters turn into lines, and those lines turn into a whole new world.
When Gwen isn’t reading or writing, she’s drinking boba milk tea and singing along to Steven Universe. You should sing along with her.
You can tell which faction she wants to be in. Then she’ll stalk herself. Having an intentionally divided culture sounds like a bad idea, it’s like intentionally injecting discrimination within a society for the sake of specialization. That’s cool. I guess the factions don’t interact with each other much anyways.