Vanessa Fowler, online editor

For a few years, there had been a swell of novels under dystopian young adult literature, but as quickly as the genre rose to power, it faded away. As someone who absolutely adored dystopian books when I got into reading, I was devastated to find less and less interesting dystopian books. 

“The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins took the world by storm. It was a global phenomenon in its own right, a rally cry for adolescents everywhere. With “The Hunger Games” success, many other authors tried their hand at YA literature, trying to catch the same success of “The Hunger Games.” 

One such book that came to shelves and later big screens was “Divergent” by Veronica Roth. This book, in my opinion, set the ball rolling for the end of the dystopian Young Adult (YA) genre. YA literature is geared towards 12 to 18-year-olds who are trying to find themselves in the world, feeling like everything is against them, and overall, feeling relatively powerless, and this genre places characters their age into wild situations where teenagers can identify with said characters and feel as though they have power too. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to harp on the genre itself. I loved reading YA books, still do actually. I’m here to harp on “Divergent.” This book broke down what made dystopian YA literature so engaging into something lacking any luster. This novel sets up the world with an overly controlling government that forces 16-year-olds to choose their one defining personality trait for the rest of their lives. 

Since middle through high schoolers are still figuring out who they are, they try to fit themselves into specific categories in order to fit in. Therefore, an entire system focused on stripping people down to one category, factions, is enticing. Everyone wants to fit in after all. However, when they’re different, it leads to them being uncomfortable and forcing themselves to fit into the categories, but people aren’t meant to fit into those boxes neatly. 

This is where our protagonist, Tris, who is different, but wants to fit in, comes into the picture. We have our female protagonist who does not have any outstanding qualities; her being divergent means she’s an average person with multiple traits, outside of being determined. 

With these qualities, she’s easy for anyone to project themselves onto, and she’s drawn to the wildest and most free-spirited faction, which is made to look the most appealing for the audience to want to be a part of. Where the protagonist, and therefore your audience, can take power into their own hands, learn how to fight and all around be what is deemed as a wild teenager without consequence. 

The character can then take on opponents twice her size after a short time of work in order to show ‘she is powerful’ and therefore the audience is too, despite nothing building on to how she could be that way. Only that she was, an almost chosen one idea, without the prophecy. 

Now that she’s different and trying to fit into her new station, she meets the love interest, who is a tall, handsome, brooding man. He doesn’t need much more of a personality than that, because once again he is defined by a single personality trait. Our protagonist, because she is different and therefore that makes her special and a hero, must then take on the government who has a stupid plan of taking control of everyone else. The villain here didn’t represent anything in this book because they only existed for the average protagonist to stand against, as she was the only possible option. Because of that, the YA genre begins to crumble as authors try to follow this same hollow, bare bones design. 

What made “The Hunger Games” so great was how it was a call out to media machines and genuine anger with issues at the time. The author intended it to be sincere about subjects that were horrible and that resonated with a lot of people, people who knew that same anger and wanted that power back. Katniss served as a better protagonist because she was angry, powerless and thrust into situations, trying her best to find her way through them, as opposed to Tris in “Divergent” whose situations were catered around her without any commentary or anger in the world. It was pushed together in order to be marketable, and many other novels followed in its footsteps until now, and dystopian YA literature is hardly a thing.