"DIVERGENT"

We watched Divergent on HBO recently. It's yet another of the ever-growing Young Adults in Dystopia genre, and the first of yet another trilogy, this adapted from the novels of Veronica Roth. The movie didn't meet with much critical acclaim.

Ingredients are as per popular YA in Dystopia recipe: Young female (or male) heroic figure, set in a city or country in post-war, post-environmental catastrophe, or amid some pre- or post-apocalyptic state of affairs. Visions of the future in YA novels are always dark and post-something nasty. Whether such scenarios are meant as an allegory for general adolescent and teenage angst, or as a precient peep into the future by the authors of these novels and the movie-makers, is up to audiences to decide, if they even think that deeply about what they've watched or read.

Divergent is pretty run-of-the-mill YA dystopian fare. Husband wasn't keen on it, while I quite liked the movie. An astrologically-tinted lens applied to some parts of the storyline is an interesting experiment.

The story is set in a walled-in, devastated, Chicago. (Nothing is mentioned about other parts of the USA, or indeed other parts of the world - perhaps the novel or sequel enlightens readers on this front). The city's population is segregated into "factions", determined by individual temperament. People within each faction provide the service for which they are best fitted, personality-wise. The factions are: Abnegation (public servants - they pretty much run things for the community); Erudite (highly intelligent egg-heads who would like to overthrow Abnegation's seeming seniority); Amity (the farmers and peace lovers); Candor (lawyers, judges); and Dauntless (the brave and fearless "protectors").

At age 16, after going through some techno-assisted aptitude testing, each person must decide to which faction they choose to belong - for life. To be outside of these distinct factions is a definite no-no. Factionless individuals, those who decline to belong to a single faction, or are thrown out of the faction they chose at age 16, are relegated to remain a part of a poor, hungry, and homeless group.

Anyone with a "feel" for astrology might understand why I soon began, from time to time, viewing the movie through a wider, astrologically-slanted lens. The humors: sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic ; the elements: Earth, Fire, Air, Water; the modes: Cardinal, Fixed, Mutable; and, naturally: "What's your sign?" Human nature, identity, conformity..... labels. Labels can be useful, but are never a good thing when taken to extremes, ignoring diversity.

This, first film of the trilogy, sets the scene. We watch development of the young heroine, Beatrice, who comes from an Abnegation family. At age 16, somewhat conflicted, she chooses to join the Dauntless faction and changes her name to Triss. We're taken through her initiation and training, her learning to confront and deal with her inner fears. We meet her Dauntless companions, some of whom are clearly sociopaths! We also meet the Erudite faction's leader, Jeanine - another version of Thatcher/Clinton/Wicked Witch of the West, this time played by Kate Winslet.

Ms Winslet is one of a couple of slightly older and more widely known star names in the cast, no doubt included to entice adult bums onto cinema seats. Ashley Judd is the other, playing Beatrice's mother. The rest of the cast were new to me, including the lead actress Shailene Woodley, and her love interest (well there always has to be one) Theo James, who I would have recognised had I been a fan of Downton Abbey. Full cast list HERE. The two young leads played their parts very well, I thought.

Beatrice/Triss has no sociopathic tendencies, she doesn't fit in completely with the Dauntless faction - this is something gradually realised by her, as well as by shrewder members of the Dauntless leadership. I'll reveal no more detail, except to say that the film's title describes its heroine, and others who have become factionless, the Divergents, and are feared by leaderships because of their ability to think and act differently from those whose diversity of thought and skill have become stunted by continued segregation and manipulation.

Whether young adult audiences will watch this film and realise that, as well as a tale of a young woman's rite of passage, padded by a mild love story, there's a not very veiled criticism going on, an allegorical representation of some of today's problems. A potentially menacing whisper of what it would be like to live under a totally controlling leadership is there for any paying attention.

Jeanine (Thatcher/Clinton/Wicked Witch of West) says more than once during the movie that the original plan to segregate the city's population came about because of human nature. Human nature had been responsible for the horrendous war that left the city (and presumably the world) in such a calamitous state . I have to, reluctantly, agree with Jeanine on this point. I've often written on this blog that human nature (which astrologers contend is brought about by the place planet Earth has in our galaxy, and perhaps in the universe as a whole) is at the heart of our troubles.

No doubt, initially, segregation was tried with good intention, but arrangements and rules had been allowed to become too extreme, overly authoritarian - human nature at work again. (They say, "You can't fight city hall" - even less human nature!) The city had become nothing less than a fascist regime, using social engineering, mind manipulation via chemicals, and no doubt other nasties, possibly to be revealed in sequels. Chemically-induced mind manipulation was at its worst in Divergent's version of dystopia when used on members of the Dauntless faction (supposedly the brave and fearless "protectors") to force them to follow orders - orders which would result in genocide - or at least in "factionicide".

Divergent uses elements which have appeared in just about any other Young Adults in Dystopia movie or book one could name, whether of the blockbuster or lesser-known variety. While it's interesting to discover how many different ways there can be of cobbling these elements together, it'll surely soon be time to create some new ideas and fresh material!

"The Giver" gave me food for thought....

I enjoy reading novels described as "dystopian fiction" or "speculative fiction", so it was on the cards that sooner or later I'd come across Lois Lowry's The Giver for which she won the Newbery Medal in 1993. The novel was written with age 12+ young people as its target readership. I decided to give it a whirl anyway, having found it well-recommended in an online list of dystopian novels.

It's a slim volume, and quickly read - slim as compared to my last read, Stephen King's 11/22/63. I first tried to read The Giver some months ago, but put it aside after the first chapter, declaring it archly, "too young for me!" Then, recently, I read that a movie based on the book is in the works. Jeff Bridges has, it appears, had a yen to put the novel on film for 2 decades or more. This news had me digging the book from the bottom of my "to read" pile and starting it anew. This time I finished it.

Having no children of my own and never having had younger siblings, or much contact at all with children, though I was one once myself, in case anyone ever doubts it, I'm unaware of the rate of understanding children achieve at various age levels. When I'd finished the book I said to my husband, "12-year old kids wouldn't understand this!" On further thought, though, maybe the story can give young people valuable glimpses of things they'd not yet thought about. Complex issues, complex even for adults to grasp, set out in a way that would be easily digestible, and provide a leaping-off stage for later reading of those famous, deeper and darker more adult-aimed novels with themes not a million miles from that of The Giver.

The Giver is a story about a boy who lives in a world of the far distant future, a world where poverty, hunger, crime, discomfort, sickness, unemployment and unhappiness are unknown. The "Community" in which the boy, Jonas, lives is controlled in every aspect, down to the smallest details of everyday life. Even the types of clothes they can wear, and their hair styles are controlled. Jobs are assigned according to aptitude, spouses are assigned, children are assigned, the stirrings of sexual urges at puberty and onward are controlled. However, unlike some famous adult dystopian novels, these people are content with the way things are. Utopia might be a better description than dystopia. The Community, one of several others run along similar lines, is colourless (literally), people have, unknowingly, lost the ability to see colour. They have no memory, no history, no concept of what real love is, no rage or strong emotions.

At age 12 Jonas is selected for an honoured position: "The Receiver of Memory". The Community has been "freed" of all memories of the past, of all of the world's history. Memories are retained and held by one person only, known as The Giver. Jonas will take over this position in time, once he has received all of the world's memories from The Giver, who is now tired and frail.

When Jonas begins taking on the world's memories, along with accompanying pain, until now an unknown sensation, he begins to question the world of The Community in which he has grown up, a world of sameness. He begins to see a different world where colour once existed, where intense joy and pain, love and war, sickness, greed, and freedom of choice were all a part of life. How he reacts to these revelations fills the last part of the novel.

An adult (me) reading The Giver cannot help questioning certain elements which most children might not wonder about. Most importantly, I wanted to know how, and why, the situation in The Community had developed. How had memory been erased from the population? How had the ability to perceive colour been erased? Was it blanket brain-washing? Perhaps Ms Lowry intended these plot elements as metaphors, but would 12-year old children understand? The Community's world appears to be climate controlled, so technology has to be at a highly advanced level, presumably only available to the ruling counsel of elders. What about the land outside of the communities, that area described as "Elsewhere". What goes on there - are there people there too?

"Release", often mentioned in the story, isn't correctly understood by members of The Community, nor probably by young readers at first, but seasoned readers of dystopian fiction would cotton-on to it immediately. Soylent Green, nudge nudge, wink wink.

The novel has an open ending, left so for each reader to imagine their own version.

I can't say I didn't enjoy the read, I did, but was left wanting much more. I understand there are three more "sister" novels set in a similar world, but there's no actual sequel to The Giver. I don't want a sequel as much as a prequel!

What was the message Lois Lowry hoped to convey? That freedom of choice is essential for true happiness? That seriously dangerous possibilities appear on the horizon when all freedoms are denied to the people with control left in the hands of the few?

The novel does not tell the reader whether all the people of The Community were ever involved in making the original choice which brought about the Community's current rules, and if not, why not - or indeed why? Perhaps the people, bowed down with pain, hunger, sickness, scarred by many wars, were only too relieved to have the option of a carefree, pain free lifestyle - for all?

If Gian Paul, an old blog friend who lives in Brazil, were still around he'd be alerting me to the fact that this novel has echoes in it from an ancient allegory: Plato’s Allegory of the Cave from The Republic. In a nutshell HERE.

The Giver is, reportedly, a popular book presented for reading and review in schools, 5th grade and onward. I wonder if, perhaps, the young people see in it some reflection of the restrictions of school life, its rules and regulations, uniforms, time limits, homework requirements, etc.? Hauling my memory back and back, to when I was between 12 and 16 : what was I reading? Left to my own devices I read escape stories! Novels about escape or attempted escape from German prisoner of war camps, and life in Japanese prison camps....I devoured those! Escape! Yes! Couldn't wait to escape from school and from the town where I grew up. At school, at age 11 or 12 our reading matter, as I recall, was "Moonfleet" by J. Meade Falkner and "Prester John" by John Buchan. A couple of years on it was Dickens and Shakespeare all the way. A far cry from The Giver!

The film based on the novel is due for release in August. I shall look forward to comparing it with the book. Already I have misgivings. It is said that the leading role of Jonas has been "adjusted", to be played by a male several years older than 12. It bodes not well.

BOOKS - "a uniquely portable magic” (Stephen King).

My longtime blog buddy, Wisewebwoman, posted a list of 77 books she read during 2012. (See post dated 1 January 2013 at her blog HERE). Wow! I stood back in amazement. I've made a note of a few titles for my own future reference; passing readers, who are also book readers, might be interested in her recommendations too.

My own 2012 list of books read is dismally puny, and not very interesting, in comparison to WWW's, even after adding a couple read in 2011. Here it is:






General

The Summons - John Grisham: Good, quick read.

The King of Torts - John Grisham: Likewise.

The Bridges of Madison County- Robert James Waller : (a re-read) Likewise and Excellent!

A Thousand Country Roads (Sequel to above: by Waller:) : Very good!

Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend (yet another by Robert James Waller): Good - his novels are all quick, easy reads.

I also have yet another of Waller's: High Plains Tango, have started reading, but so far it hasn't grabbed me.


Dystopian/Sci-Fi

A Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood: Excellent!

Dune - Frank Herbert : difficult, too long... still snacking at it piecemeal.

The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula Le Guin: Excellent!

Blackout - Connie Willis : Nope - not an enjoyable writing style for me couldn't get past first chapters, book gone to Goodwill.

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller Jr.: 1/3 Excellent 1/3 Poor 1/3 Good. Roman Catholic references became tiresome.

Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke : Very good indeed.

The Herald - Michael Shaara: Excellent read. Couldn't put it down! Finished it in 2 sittings, could've done it in one but dinner called. Husband read it after me, his verdict: "erm...just okay". (Note: He reads stuff I wouldn't touch with a barge pole!)

Conquest Over Time - Michael Shaara: a long short story/45-page novella, interesting for it's use of astrology in the storyline.

Waiting to be read:

Small Gods - Terry Pratchett

Route 66 ( non-fiction) - Billy Connolly. We saw 3 of the 4 episodes of the TV show on PBS, enjoyed them a lot.

The Anubis Gates - Tim Powers: Part of Christmas prez from husband. I have peeked inside and have grave doubts - but if I don't read it, he will - he is a very disciplined reader - even if he doesn't like a book he will soldier on and finish it. Not me - life's way too short!

On order
The Giver - Lois Lowry. It's mainly aimed at a young adult readership, but as there's a movie adaptation in the works starring Jeff Bridges I might, for once in my life, get to the book before the movie!

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo : The dreaded 1,400 page I have resolved to read in 2013 - no chickening out!

Variations on a Theme: Mankind's Further Evolution

I've recently read Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End followed immediately by Michael Shaara's The Herald (Michael Shaara was the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Killer Angels adapted for the movie Gettysburg (my post on that movie is linked).

Childhood's End and The Herald can be classed as apocalyptic/dystopian/science fiction novels. Science fiction was right in Arthur C. Clarke's wheelhouse, and though Michael Shaara's most famous book was historical (other end of the scale) he did write some other sci-fi stories and at least one other sci-fi novel - strange combination, history and science fiction!

I enjoy apocalyptic/dystopian novels and some sci-fi, though not all. Enjoying tales of dystopia is perverse of me I guess. I've tried to work out why, but can't quite unravel it. These stories don't scare me at all, or give me bad dreams as reading horror tales of zombies, werewolves or blood-sucking vampires might. The novels sell well, many from decades past have come to be called classics (think:Fahrenheit 451, 1984 The Handmaid's Tale).

I wasn't aware of it when I started reading, but Childhood's End and The Herald have loosely similar themes (apart from straightforward dystopia) : the improvement and further evolution of man, albeit by different means.

BEWARE SPOILERS.

The Herald (1981) was later re-titled The Noah Conspiracy and had a revised ending (I don't yet know how it differs from the original, but can hazard a guess). Storyline: a scientist plans to create an improved version of the human race, which will involve killing millions of people. The tale unfolds gradually, starting with the pilot of a private aircraft flying into a small US airport and finding it deserted. The reader is left, for much of the book, with the pilot attempting to find out exactly what's going on. We discover, eventually, a genetic scientist’s plan to create a "better" human race, eliminating negative traits which threaten, over time, to cause the death of the whole species. His plan will involve the mass killing of many millions of people, but will ensure survival of the race.

I found the novel a very easy read and a book I could not put down. I read most of it in one sitting (unusual for me), only stopped because it was dinner time.

The original title of the novel The Herald refers to words of
Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher, poet etc. An extract from his Thus Spoke Zarathustra by explanation:

Zarathustra’s Prologue:
When Zarathustra arrived at the edge of the forest, he came upon a town. Many people had gathered there in the marketplace to see a tightrope walker who had promised a performance. The crowd, believing that Zarathustra was the ringmaster come to introduce the tightrope walker, gathered around to listen. And Zarathustra spoke to the people:

I teach you the Overman! Mankind is something to be overcome. What have you done to overcome mankind?

All beings so far have created something beyond themselves. Do you want to be the ebb of that great tide, and revert back to the beast rather than overcome mankind? What is the ape to a man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just so shall a man be to the Overman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame. You have evolved from worm to man, but much within you is still worm. Once you were apes, yet even now man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

Even the wisest among you is only a confusion and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I ask you to become phantoms or plants?

Behold, I teach you the Overman! The Overman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The Overman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beg of you my brothers, remain true to the earth, and believe not those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them! ........................................Lo, I am a herald of the lightning, and a heavy drop out of the cloud: the lightning, however, is the Overman!"

Childhood's End first published in 1953 wasn't such an easy read, but still enjoyable. I balked a bit when the author changed his cast of characters a third of the way through the novel.

The story is told in three parts, spanning the period roughly mid-20th century to 2075. The author could have been echoing or projecting, via analogy, the troubled situation around the time of the story's conception: cold war, segregation, possibility of nuclear annihilation, uneasy years when the horrors of World War 2 were still fresh in memory.

Standard sci-fi ingredients begin the novel: huge space ships positioned over the world's major cities, ships populated by a race known as The Overlords, who never show themselves to humans, but communicate with human representatives. The Overlords were not here to take over the planet for our gold or other reserves, or to enslave the human race. Instead they seemed to be intent on saving us from ourselves. Over time they solve our major troubles: war, famine, segregation, crime and poverty become things of the past. Any resistance is quashed by direct application of CIA-style "soft power". Utopia is born. Whether that was a Good Thing is a matter for philosophical perusal - maybe a bit of astrological perusal also. Would it be possible to erase our natural instincts of aggression, greed, lust (drawn from the planetary position of Earth)? And would it be A Good Thing to deny us the ability to choose for ourselves, to choose wrong decisions, create destructive items, wreak havoc, jump to mistaken conclusions, but also to attempt to create solutions to overcome what our weaknesses had wrought?

We begin to see the outcome in the remaining two phases of the story, set in the following 100 or so years. The Overlords revealed themselves. Humans were horrified to find the alien beings looked incredibly like illustrations encountered somewhere long ago, in a far less benign role! They tell humans that their purpose is to protect them from "powers and forces that lie among the stars – forces beyond anything that you can ever imagine…. ‘It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man."

During the story's final phase, ten years later, Earth's children discover paranormal skills, fall into catatonia after strange dreams, and eventually withdraw from contact with parents. Overlords reveal that their job as servants of The Overmind, is to shepherd humanity into its next stage of development, though The Overlords, for unexplained reasons, cannot progress. Humanity in its current form has reached the end of its existence; the newly cultivated species will join The Overmind, Earth will be no more.

I was particularly taken by a very clever twist - the explanation of the Overlord's physical appearance.

The book can be read as a straightforward sci-fi tale, or can also be seen as a network of analogies, some more obvious than others, and, it must be remembered, seen from the viewpoint of the author in the early 1950s.

The huge spaceships forever hovering over all major cities = a world state fostering social justice. Add some prescience on the part of Arthur C. Clarke and translate them as super-sized corporations, enforcing sterility via their own opaque motivations. Interwoven, too is the ancient vision of of angels/demons hovering over mankind.

Astrologers believe that our individuality is defined, in part, by the position of the Sun, Moon and planets at the exact time and in the exact place where we were born. Whether that individuality could be so easily stripped from us, as a race, by benign means, is something this book might be asking us to consider. What did Arthur C. Clarke think of astrology? Not a lot, it seems. And that's a pity. See HERE

As far as I know, early sci-fi authors, while envisioning flying cars, alien beings and inter-galactic flight, didn't ever mention something as wildly unbelievable as The Internet, smart phones, i-pods, Facebook, Twitter. Already I'm beginning to feel that today's young generation belong to a subtly different race from the one to which I belong myself. This type of feeling can only spread, even to those many years my junior, in coming years. Perhaps this is the "shift in consciousness" some seem to expect....beginning with the end of the current cycle in the Mayan calendar?

Dystopian, Plutonic/Scorpionic and Teenaged.

The other day I came accross a mention of the growth in recent years of a new sub-genre in the Young Adult Fiction category: Young Adult dystopian novels. A selection of such novels, with mini-synopses, is included in a list at Bart's Bookshelf.

What all these have in common, of course, is that the novels' main characters are all teenagers, struggling to live and survive in worlds filled with difficulty and oppressive elements of one sort or another. These assorted difficulties and challenges possibly stand as metaphors for problems teenage readers are experiencing in their own lives, in (relatively) non-dystopian surroundings.

I'd guess that today's young people, growing up in a world of Facebook, Twitter, wall-to-wall internet, video games, laptops, smartphones, i-pads etc.etc. would not be content to read the kinds of books my generation was reading at their age. Although.....actually, thinking back, my favourite reading theme at that age was about escape from prisoner-of-war camps during World War 2 - the basic feel of a need to escape, from something, was still there.

The recent crop of YA dystopian novels are, presumably, written by adults. Adult authors would seem to be tapping into some communal need to exhale some of the crappy stuff going on all around them, every day, as well as filling a desire of young readers who need an escape valve for their own "issues".

We shouldn't be surprised to see some of these novels adapted for the cinema soon, following today's current leader, The Hunger Games. Teenage dystopia is, in fashionista-speak, "the new black".

Astrologically - anything to be said? Hmmmmm - Pluto (things dark and scary) transited its sign of rulership, Scorpio (dark and scary) roughly 1984 to 1995, those years, or at least the middle to end of the span, cover the birth years of the generation now among the targeted readers of Young Adult dystopian novels. A young readership probably already satiated and bored of Twilight's (no relation) tales of vampires or werewolves, has moved on now to Dark Dystopia.