For many, literature is an escape. It creates new worlds for us to explore and ultimately teaches us lessons that we take into our everyday life. One of the main topics literature focuses on is conformity. It challenges the values society attempts to place upon people. Similarly, in life people face many challenges. They have values and standards they are forced to uphold as well see a stigma surrounding the consequences if they fail to conform. In the novel Divergent by Veronica Roth and the play Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw the main characters break the barriers bestowed upon them in their own societies and ultimately become their own persons through gaining independence, standing up for what they think is right, and choosing the path they want for themselves. Without characters like this in novels, literature would be monotonous and stagnant. Everyone would be unoriginal since they conform to the same rules.
In Divergent, Tris is the poster child for going against conformity. She chooses her own path in life, goes against “the test”, and she challenges any standards that society places out for her. Tris leaves her faction, abnegation, because “[she isn’t] selfless enough, no matter how hard [she tries] to be." (pg 336) She isn’t what her faction obliges her to be, and unlike many others she did not try to become something she was not. She moves onto something that suits herself better. “Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way.” (pg 442) but the Divergents’ “minds move in a dozen different directions. [They] can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies [their] leader...
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... before any conforms that their society wants them to follow.
Divergent and Pygmalion taught readers that being different is acceptable, going against the conforms society creates for us is sometimes a good thing. It helps us become our own people. Without having characters in literature like Tris and Liza, readers would not want to become their own person. They would not be inspired to fight against what society has set out for them. Literature teaches us lessons that cannot always just be taught through human experience. It gives us the chance to live through other characters and learn our lessons from them.
Works Cited
Roth, Veronica. Divergent. London: HarperCollins Children's, 2012. Print.
Shaw, Bernard. Pygmalion. Frankfurt Am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970. Print.
Truman, Gemma. "Conformity and Individuality." Conformity and Individuality. 1998. Web. 17 May 2014.
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