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Chandler Kammerer Alicia McKenzie Advanced American Literature 22 April 2014 The Divergent Dystopian Society A very famous young author has already published a very successful series. The series was about a dystopian society in the United States. It takes place in the Midwest, and it centers around Chicago for most of the series. The Divergent Series is about a city that is split up into 5 factions. Each faction lives a different way of life and has their own set of values, morals, and characteristics. Veronica Roth has been very successful for only being 25, and has done much in her life already, including getting married and having a book series that has started growing into a very popular movie franchise. Veronica Roth was born August 19th, 1988 and she was raised in a suburb of Chicago, Barrington. She attended Carleton College in Minnesota for a year before she transferred to Northwestern. She graduated in 2010 and her degree was in creative writing. In 2011, she published Divergent and also married her husband, Nelson Fitch. They currently live together in Evanston Illinois. She struggles with anxiety and goes to therapy for it. She also has a blog that expresses her interests and is used for advice for writers. Veronica Roth wrote Divergent before she even graduated from Northwestern. She wrote the Divergent series and each of the three books were published once per year from 2011 to 2013. Each book in the series is titled Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant. She is currently

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writing short stories about one of the characters from the series, Tobias Eaton. She has written four short stories that focus on Tobias, whose nickname is Four. The series has sold 7.5 million copies so far of her dystopian society. It is often related to the Hunger Games since they are both set in post-modern America with different societies that the stereotyped and technologically advanced country that it is currently. For most of the Divergent series, the main character, Tris, lives in her city, but eventually she leaves the city after a war breaks out between the faction societies. Each faction has its own characteristics, with Abnegation being selfless, Amity being peaceful, Candor being truthful, Dauntless being brave, and Erudite focusing on knowledge. A large part of the reason was about the knowledge of people who were Divergent (those who showed the characteristics of more than one faction) were supposed to leave the city eventually, as well as the new control of the city by people who werent tied to any faction. Outside of the city, there was a Bureau that oversaw the city of Chicago. There were several cities, mainly in the Midwest, which had locations that oversaw them, as they were actually experiments. The cause of the damage was because of a distant Purity war that resulted in people who were genetically damaged. Those genetically damaged were put in the experiments to help repair their genes over time, and to also keep the separation of them and the genetically pure. The Divergent are those who have become pure and are welcomed back into the Bureau. There was an internal conflict when Tris realized that the division between the two was not just that they had different genes, but that they are mentally unstable. She went to go into the weapons lab and use a memory serum to stop the Bureau from doing the same thing to Chicago, and ran into David, the leader, in the Bureau. She made it through a death serum into the inner room but was shot several times and killed in the process of using the memory serum to reset the minds of

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everyone in the Bureau. There was a new idea planted in the workers minds that everyone was equal and many people and Tobias lived alone on an outskirt of town after the reset. Veronica Roth has already become a very successful author at such a young age. She is only 25 and is already married and living with her husband outside of Chicago. She was able to publish a New York Times Bestseller series before she even graduated with her writing degree. Four days after she published Divergent, she was able to be picked up by Harper Collins as well. Veronica Roth is just starting out as an author and there is so much to expect from her in the future.