Tag: 1984

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Posted June 29, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Book of the Month, Dystopia, Young Adult / 6 Comments

Divergent by Veronica RothTitle: Divergent (Goodreads)
Author: Veronica Roth
Series: Divergent #1
Published: Harper Collins, 2011
Pages: 489
Genres: Dystopia, Young Adult
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: AmazonBook DepositoryKindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

A futuristic, post-apocalyptic Chicago is where the dystopian world of Divergent is set; where everyone is divided into five factions. At 16 you are required to take an aptitude test; this will determine which faction you are best suited for. Abnegation are selfless, Amity are peaceful, Candour are honest, Dauntless are brave and Erudite are intelligent. Following the aptitude test comes the Choosing Day (terrible name) where you are required to pick which faction you wish to belong to based on your score and personal preference. For some, like Celeb Prior this means giving up his family and moving from Abnegation to Erudite.

The novel, Divergent follows Beatrice Prior (later known as Tris) who is one of those rare people who have to hide the fact that the aptitude test was inconclusive. In this world she is known as divergent and would be considered an outcast and a danger to society if this was to come out. Tris’ test shows she has an aptitude towards three factions; Dauntless, Erudite and Abnegation. She picks Dauntless where she is trained up to be courageous and reckless, tools she believes maybe useful if her test scores ever come out.

I read this novel as a social critique; the idea of cliques and groups taken to the extreme. You know what I’m talking about; society likes to create rivals, in sports teams, smart phones, gaming consoles, etc., but more importantly when it comes to DC verse Marvel comic’s social-political stands. In this world the Abnegation are the governing body, since they are the selfless they are tasked with looking after everyone. However the Erudite are conspiring to take control, and a step that they believe will advance the world both socially and technologically.

This makes the novel sound more complex that it actually is; in reality I found that Veronica Roth liked to wave the symbolism in the readers face forcing them to take notice. It is like a child who is proud at what she has produced; jumping up and down and explaining everything detail over and over again in the hopes that we will think she is brilliant. The symbolism is prominent in the story, she didn’t need to try and draw extra attention to it. Most readers are smart enough to figure it out and those who don’t are only interested in the plot.

Take the title of the novel and the factions, if you look at abnegation, amity, candour, dauntless, erudite and divergent in the dictionary you pretty much how the entire book worked out already. However Roth reminded us again and again what each word meant. Reminds me of that old writing tip ‘show, don’t tell’. While this is not always true, I feel within the context of Divergent, it would have been a better solution.

There are a lot of interesting themes within the novel and I really wish Roth had let people discover them on their own; I don’t like having everything pointed out to me. The whole concept of social structures and classes would have given a literary theorist in the school of Marxism a lot to work with. There are other themes including courage verse recklessness, power, choices, secrets and even guilt that made the novel bearable.

While the novel has a protagonist fighting against a totalitarian state, the book is full of Christian themes and concepts. At times you can see Abnegation being depicted as weird/cult-like faction in the back drop of a controlling society but then they come through as righteous and merciful. There is a Christian misconception that stems from the Age of Enlightenment, which seems relevant in some radical churches that still believe that intellectualism is a dangerous thing. This comes across in the novel as well as some other Christian ideals. Veronica Roth states she is a Christian but has also claimed that Divergent is not a religious novel. She even believes that most Christians would consider the novel to be profane. It is unclear if Roth is an advocate for intellectualism or warning the reader of its dangers.

Yet another issue I found with Divergent was the characters and world building felt a little flat; I think Roth spent too much time explaining everything that the plot and the setting suffered. I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters; in fact thought they were all two dimensional, which is possibly the case with most of the characters. The idea of each faction just acting like a giant cookie cutter, forcing everyone to fit into that mould is clear.  The divergents (I’m not going to name them) should have been richer, more fleshed out characters. The dystopian world borrows heavily from 1984 and The Hunger Games although it sometimes forgets this and reverts back to a more generic present day world. Then realising the book has gotten off track reverts to borrow again from previous dystopian novels.

Finally I would like to focus a little on the feminist qualities of Divergent, since reading The Fictional Woman this seems to be an area of focus for me. The concept of a woman trying to figure out her place in the world is a positive step for equality; however Divergent also reverts to two old archetypes that need to stop. I’m talking about the idea of a wise intelligent older woman being depicted as a witch or evil character and the female heroine needs to have a female enemy. Divergent does tackle the idea of what happens to a woman when she becomes more successful than the men she is competing against, and while it is not pretty it is a very real issue that needs to be looked at more often.

I would have liked this novel a lot more if the message was subtle and ambiguous; I just feel like everything got over done. As a reader I like to look for the messages but if the author hits me over the head with it and then proceeds to explain everything I lose interest. Dystopian fiction has a unique ability to tackle social issues and just because a book is aimed for a young adult audience doesn’t mean they need to be everything explained to them. I have to wonder how many YA lovers read the book for the themes rather than the plot. I suspect the majority of them read for the story and they probably prefer not to be stepped through themes either. If Veronica Roth left the themes in place and focused on the plot, this may have been a better book.


On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee

Posted March 6, 2014 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Dystopia, Literary Fiction / 0 Comments

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae LeeTitle: On Such a Full Sea (Goodreads)
Author: Chang-rae Lee
Published: Little Brown and Company, 2014
Pages: 352
Genres: Dystopia, Literary Fiction
My Copy: Library Book

Buy: AmazonBook DepositoryKindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

Dystopian literary fiction is an often under-appreciated and underutilised literary tool. Chang-rae Lee steps away from the historical novels he normally writes to give us On Such a Full Sea, a dystopian novel set over a hundred years into the future. The novel tells the story of a teenage girl Fan who works in the high walled, self-contained labour colony know as B-Mor (formally the city of Baltimore) who goes searching for the man she loves as he has mysteriously disappeared.

I often enjoy a novel that disguises political discourse with the dystopian fiction genre. Think 1984’s message on totalitarianism, Fahrenheit 451 on censorship, Super Sad True Love Story on Globalisation. On Such a Full Sea also has a political message but it is far more subtle. The thing about literary criticism and political discourse is that you can often find differing opinions; was this novel on the harsh reality of immigration, slavery, human trafficking, removal of individuality or something more? I’m not going to go into too much detail on this; you can discover that on your own.

I want to have a quick look at the dystopian world that Lee has created as it follows a similar style to that of George Orwell’s 1984. These walled communities are more like labour camps, designed to keep people in rather than out. The workers are being watched and controlled by fear; rather than by governmental oversight, the labours are been monitored by The Charters, which to me feels like middle management. In this future most of the American cities have been abandoned due to crushing debts and disease and the Chinese cities are suffering from major air and water pollution. The solution, to relocate and occupy America; this is why Fan and the others are found working in B-Mor.

The harsh realities of this dystopian world are often drowned out by the beauty in Chang-rae Lee’s writing. You can spend so much time being swept away by the writing that the plot really does take a back seat. This works only because the plot isn’t really as strong as I would have liked it to be. There are times I found myself enjoying the writing and not really paying enough attention to the plot only to have something shocking happen that snaps me back to attention. I would have liked a stronger plot, it really was a big downfall for me, not that plotless books are bad it’s just the particular story called for it.

I picked up this book because Chang-rae Lee mentored my current literary obsession Gary Shteyngart and helped him get his first book published. My first thought was On Such a Full Sea sounds very similar to Super Sad True Love Story. I expected to read a similar book about the struggles of Chinese immigrants but I’m happy to see the two novels are very different. There are a few similarities but not enough to compare them; Shteyngart uses satire and humour where Lee takes a more serious approach.

The plot may sound basic but On Such a Full Sea is a stunning yet surprising novel. This is actually my first Chang-rae Lee novel and while I enjoyed this novel, I’m not in a hurry to read his back list. Lee joins the ever growing list of serious novelists trying their hand at genre fiction. I for one am happy to see an increase in literary genre fiction; you can do some interesting things with genre fiction and blend that with the discourse of literary fiction the results are often amazing.


The Trial by Franz Kafka

Posted August 20, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Classic / 0 Comments

The Trial by Franz KafkaTitle: The Trial (Goodreads)
Author: Franz Kafka
Translator: Willa Muir
Published: Vintage, 1925
Pages: 224
Genres: Classic
My Copy: Personal Copy

Buy: AmazonBook Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I decided to read The Trial was because I saw that next week’s lecture made reference to this book as well as Orwell’s 1984. These books weren’t required reading but I’ve read 1984 and I thought it would be a good excuse to read The Trial, because I’m pretentious like that. I really enjoyed Kafka’s The Metamorphosis so I was excited to have an excuse to read his famous unfinished novel. The Trial tells the story of Josef; a chief financial officer for a bank who finds himself being arrested and prosecuted by the authorities. The twist in the book is that the nature of his crime is never revealed to the accused or the reader.

Kafka appears to like to write philosophical novels; in The Metamorphosis he explored the idea of human identity and social acceptance. With The Trial, I get the feeling maybe this is a look at religion and the idea that life is just a big trial. Or maybe this is just an existential novel. In any case there are a lot of different aspects this book offers for exploration and these books were you can pull out different interpretations are often books I tend to love.

This is a quick read and now that I’ve read my second Kafka novel, I now understand his appeal. I’m not sure what to read next but I can’t wait to explore some more of his works. Like many classics the descriptive prose’s takes you away and you just find yourself being immersed in the story. This helps with a book that really requires your full focus.

Overall I’m satisfied with the ending of this unfinished novel, the last chapter does feel like it brings the story to an end but I can’t help but wonder where Kafka would have gone next. There was a bit of inconsistency throughout this book, with the timing and narrative but this never seemed to be a problem, it just added to the dark and gloominess of this novel. If you’ve not read Kafka, I highly recommend you give him a go, there is such a joy in reading a novel like this.


The Need to Make Speculative Fiction a Genre

Posted May 25, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Literature, Speculative Fiction / 0 Comments

twenty thousandRecently in the book club, I started a conversation on the difference between speculative fiction and science fiction, which maybe was met with a little bit of confusion but I think that was mainly due to people thinking of speculative fiction as an umbrella team that covers science fiction, fantasy, horror, supernatural fiction and more genres. This is correct but I want to talk about Speculative fiction as a genre for now.

While many people thing of speculative fiction as encompassing the more fantastical fiction genres, I would like to see a shift away from this definition and more towards the genre that Margret Atwood has been fighting for.  I think she said it best when she defined the differences between the two as:

“What I mean by “science fiction” is those books that descend from HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds, which treats of an invasion by tentacled Martians shot to Earth in metal canisters – things that could not possibly happen – whereas, for me, “speculative fiction” means plots that descend from Jules Verne’s books about submarines and balloon travel and such – things that really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened when the authors wrote the books.” 

I think there is a real need to separating the two as some books that are classed as science fiction don’t really fit into the general conception of sci-fi. I’m talking about books like George Orwell’s 1984, Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea and even Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.

This brings me to my point, and an interesting problem. While it would be nice to separate the two genres so that people don’t get the wrong impression of a book being classed as Science Fiction; how do we choose which goes where. Take Jules Verne as an example. At the time of his writing, these books would definitely be considered as science fiction, but with the progression of time, most of the technology in Verne’s novels have been realised; making the books speculative fiction. So how do we class these books, do we make them science fiction until the technology catches up or do we just class books as speculative fiction if there is a possibility that these events could actually happen? I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this.