K-SCORE: 11
Author: Veronica Roth
Spoiler Level: Minor
Insurgent, the sequel to dystopian YA kickoff novel Divergent, is more of the same, but is mostly devoid of the semi-unique society structure, making it significantly worse than its terrible predecessor. I am currently fielding theories as to why this series is so successful, so popular. Currently prevailing: the immature treatment of its subject matter is appealing to many shallow thinkers. Veronica Roth writes the kind of bullshit adolescent girls want to believe in. Let me know if you have anything better.
“first-grader Mad-Lib style of world building”
Roth has created a universe that feels small, bleak, uninteresting, unappealing, annoying, and not detailed. Though living in a city (Chicago - so presumably a large place), Tris and her band of similarly named characters travel between only five locations, the poorly described “bases” or “headquarters” of the five factions. Roth’s vocabulary appears to not extend beyond words like: hall, building, room, house, and street, and she matches these nouns with color words (usually blue or red) and a size description (large or small). It’s your classic first-grader Mad-Lib style of world building. While reading, I couldn’t help but homogenize the locales into two - a bad-guy place where Tris is in trouble, stalking the halls with a pistol, shooting people, being captured and thrown into execution chambers and whatnot, or a good-guy place, on the verge of being raided by bad guys.
Part of the reason the world building feels so embarrassingly incomplete is that Roth has conflicts that involve mind control serums, virtual reality simulations, computers that profile personalities, etc. Somehow these technologies only exist at the peak of conflicts, and have never led to a sophisticated or complicated societal development. Unless talking about, destroying, or unleashing the plot-driving technologies (usually with total confusion), the characters utilize familiar 21st century American tech. They drive cars and trucks, shoot guns, live in the same kinds of houses we live in, heal their bullet wounds in hospitals, sit on wood chairs, eat with forks and knives, apply lipstick, wear jeans and t-shirts - usually black ones, or blue, or red, or yellow, or I don’t know why I need to know the color of every goddamn thing Tris is wearing.
“The adults in Insurgent behave stupidly. The adolescents are so irrational and impulsive it borders on schizophrenia and nihilism.”
Her language is also transported from our society. Tris is one babystep away from saying, “hashtag Dauntless, yolo,” before she does her next dangerous and idiotic thing. The dialogue is packed with never-ending colloquialisms and idioms from modern America. They say things like “Oh my God,” even though religion doesn’t appear to be much of a factor in their lives. They like to tell each other to “shut up” or dismiss each other by saying, “Yeah… whatever.” It all adds up to the feeling that this girl, Tris, and her friends and enemies didn’t grow up in a dystopian and segregated city. They were transported there at the start of the story from some private high school in Evanston circa 2010, implanted with false memories and personal histories - why not, there’s no end to what kinds of mental-manipulation plot devices Roth will add. The favorite thing Tris and co. call each other is, “stupid.”
And for pretty good reason. The adults in Insurgent behave stupidly. The adolescents are so irrational and impulsive it borders on schizophrenia and nihilism. Tris is the worst offender. She jumps from one location to the next, caring about the latest thing introduced to her life so much she’s willing to die for it, and then forgetting it as soon as someone, usually her boyfriend, comes to rescue her. Always she’s lying, breaking promises, nearly getting herself killed, actually getting other people killed, or being the one to kill them, and there are never any real repercussions for those actions. In fact, the opposite happens where a bunch of people who weren’t on board with Team Tris have to jump on, apologize, and say, yes, Tris, you are the center of the universe. Thank you so much for starting that riot in the peaceful faction complex; thank you for angering important faction allies; thank you for surrendering yourself and the secret information you shouldn’t know to our enemy, breaking a promise to your best friend, to your boyfriend, lying to all of them, and crying the whole way. Thank you! We need you Tris.
It’s a brutal read. If the world and lazy shoot-or-get-shot plot don’t break you, the characters sure will. I can’t keep track of all these white simple midwestern names spoken without surnames or titles, never hinting at characters’ ages or backgrounds. Christina, Marcus, Tori, Marlene, Johanna, Jeanine, Edward, Peter, Caleb, Hector, Jack, Evelyn, Lynn, Will… I mean, there was a Fernando for a bit, but he died saying the society mandated last words, “Go on without me!” The reason I can’t keep track of them: they all behave the same and sound the same when speaking. They’re all impulsive, they talk about the latest serum or dead character or mysterious place or rebellious plot with little detail and a lot of anger, and they all fill entirely interchangeable roles.
Whatever the story is trying to explore with its divisive faction premise, having people fit a single character trait, is lost in Insurgent’s countless other failures. Tris is supposed to be the most dynamic character, possessing three of the five attributes, bravery, selflessness, and intelligence, but she’s a self-obsessed idiot so I think Dauntless was really the only place for her, and once the faction system went to hell, there was nothing for her to do but create scary conflicts where she and the others can recklessly fire guns and call it courage.
Insurgent perhaps succeeds by appealing to a teenage girl’s desire to lose her family and have her boyfriend, who is a little older, taller, and handsome, say to her, “don’t worry, I’ll be your family now,” but if so, that’s fucked up. It’s also fucked up that the accepted content of a book like this can have no swearing, no physical contact beyond making out, but lots and lots of cold-blooded murder.