Insurgent

Abstract

Insurgent is the second instalment of the Divergent series, set in a dystopian future in an isolated city of the United States of America, where society is divided in different factions, according to each individual’s skills. These are: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite, with Divergent individuals possessing the skills typical of more than one faction. Like the previous novel, Insurgent continues to follow the Divergent Tris. After she and her lover Tobias (also a Divergent) discover the plan of Erudite Jeanine Matthews to destroy Abnegation using a serum to control the Dauntless (confronting her and, thus, risking their own credibility in the process, as Jeanine was an extremely influential and powerful person), they promptly seek temporary shelter within the Amity community. At some point after this, Tris and Tobias travel to the Candor headquarters, where they are subjected to a trial using truth serums which prevents them from lying; so, with that, their whole rebellion gains meaning to the Candor. Meanwhile, a group of Dauntless individuals who oppose the Divergents’ rebellion attack Tris and her allies, and they are able to knock most of them unconscious by using yet another serum for that effect. Tris and Tobias, however, remain conscious due to their condition as Divergents. Eventually, they flee the scene and, by the end of the novel, it is explained the whole concept behind their divided society: Tris and the rest of the population actually find themselves as part of an experiment and controlled test. As the world slowly descended into disarray and corruption, their city was barred from the barren outside to allow Divergents – with multiple skills and qualities – to increase and reproduce, so that the world might be a better place in the future, and the city would, then, be open so as to allow these individuals to repopulate the wastelands.