by Leah Wilson
And of course, I had to figure out the location of the Dauntless headquarters. For them, I had no idea.
An idea integral to envisioning a map of Divergent’s Chicago is that, despite the factions and their alleged rigidity, faction members were, except during their initiation phases, allowed to travel more or less freely through the city: Tris, Uriah, and other Dauntless travel from Dauntless headquarters to go zip-lining, Tris is able to visit Caleb at the Erudite compound, and all five factions attend the same school until they are sixteen. Such a large range of movement is characteristic of Chicago and sets it apart from many other cities even today: while most native New Yorkers, for example, live their entire lives within ten square blocks, Chicago and its citizens are hugely motile, with most workers within the city commuting from outer suburbs every day by car, train, bus, and sometimes, within the city, water taxis. One thing that Tris’ Chicago certainly inherited from our own is a sense of movement and a need for working transportation lines: in Insurgent, we learn that even the factionless depend on the trains. This reliance on and ability to freely use transit sets Divergent apart from other popular dystopian series, where people live in small radii, and traveling into, or even near, the bases of other disenfranchised groups is tantamount to treason.
The only place we see any kind of “turf” rigidity in the Divergent series is in the barring of Abnegation from Erudite land in the first book—their mutual disdain precludes them from allowing anyone wearing the other faction’s colors to pass through unnoticed and unscathed. And given Chicago’s deep history with gangs—one of the most notorious aspects of the city, and one that plagues its citizenry every day in tragic, tangible consequences—their movements and rivalries seemed like a useful model for understanding how the different factions might be mapped out.
As of 2012, over 400 gangs were active in Chicago proper, with more operating within the soft limits of “Chicagoland.” It would be almost impossible to create a social system like the factions and base it in Chicago without drawing comparisons to gang culture: the idea of “faction before blood”; the restrictions of colors, tattoos, and even hairstyles and naming conventions available to each faction, used not only to mark brethren, but to differentiate them from outsiders; and of course, the catastrophic violence when members of these alliances clash.
When we think about the Divergent trilogy as fiction, we might guess that Roth’s upbringing in Chicago’s suburbs, and the clouding proximity of gang culture in the area, may have influenced her in creating Divergent’s factions (even if indirectly). Similarly, if we think of the trilogy and Tris’ city as real, we might guess that being located in what was originally Chicago, with its strong gang presence, may have influenced its development—in particular, the idea that factions might be a useful way of controlling its people’s behavior at all. At the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, David tells Tris that Chicago was the first city to have factions—a way to modulate and enforce standards of behavior. The factions certainly seem to function according to research on gang member psychology: “Sociologists believe that a gang will take on the morals, or lack of morals, of the worst members . . . this behavior can be explained as ‘group dynamics,’” writes Lou Savelli of Police Magazine.1 This seems to mirror the extent of Jeanine’s hold over the Erudite, particularly over the low-level informant and new recruit Caleb, and the way that she and the Dauntless leaders, such as Eric, build their own codes of ethics into the workings of the factions under their control. Tobias, in Divergent, noted that with Eric—a ruthless bully—as one of the leaders of the Dauntless, the Dauntless as a whole had become meaner, more lawless, and more violent.
While the Bureau may have seen the factions as a way to encourage docile behavior through nurture, eventually the behavior modification became less an act of nurture within the factions and more of a way to define the factions’ inherent, and enacted, differences: Tris becomes accustomed to jumping from trains, to getting tattoos, to eating Dauntless food and thinking “selfishly.” Likewise, she notices changes in Caleb after only a few months with the Erudite; he dons glasses with false lenses to appear more in line with his new faction’s aims, and he eventually takes his desire to fit in among the Erudite to the extreme by selling Tris out to Jeanine. This is deeply emblematic of gang brainwashing, or the hivemind, wherein “the activities of the gang become their normal functions. Others are viewed as outsiders and, at times, enemies. There is a lack of empathy toward others.”2
Finding parallels between the factions and specific gangs within today’s Chicago is, unsurprisingly, not as easy. With so many active gangs in Chicagoland, looking at gang territories to determine faction homes was like picking through a real-life consequential haystack to find a fictional dystopian needle. There are crews all over the city who wear the Dauntless colors—black—and more who wear Erudite’s blue, Amity’s red and yellow, and even Abnegation’s gray (Candor’s black and white suits were not represented). And there was also no guarantee real-world gang colors had any influence on the factions’ to begin with.
Instead, I looked to what concrete detail the books themselves provide, and Candor proved the easiest place to begin. Though we see the least of this faction in the novels, Candor helpfully provides us with some logistical truth (as their faction members would be proud to do): a set of directions in Allegiant from the Erudite compound to the Candor HQ. “We run in a pack down the alley towards Monroe Street,” Tris narrates in Allegiant. “[W]e’re on State Street [where it’s] safe to talk . . . I use my watch light to see the words written on my arm. ‘Randolph Street!’”
Of course, those directions could lead to dozens of buildings. Chicago’s a big city. But that’s where Candor’s preference for suits and truth comes in, and so does a bit more of Chicago’s sordid history—because Chicago isn’t called the Windy City for the weather; instead, it refers to the reputation of the city’s politicians for being “windbags”—their lack of candor (ahem), one might say. From the corruption of Senator William “Blond Boss” Lorimer in 1912 to the 1933 mob assassination of Mayor Anton Cermak to the fifty-year Daley Dynasty (during which the popular Chicago phrase “vote early and often” first came into use), Chicago has been a national hotbed of dirty politics for over a hundred years—probably a century more by Tris’ lifetime. Where better for the faction dedicated to radical honesty to live than the Richard J. Daley Cultural Center, located on a convenient walking path from Monroe to State to Randolph, right across the river from the “Merciless Mart”?
The idea of Candor—anyone of candor—living under the name of Daley may even qualify as a Chicagoland inside joke, a nod to the deep corruption of Chicago’s political past. The Daleys were a Democratic dynasty that ran the city from the early 1950s until 2011, at the time of Divergent’s release. While neither Mayor Daley—Richard J. or his son Richard M. Daley, who followed him to the mayoral seat—were officially charged with corruption themselves, many in their administration faced charges, as did other Illinois and Chicago-area officials during their reign. Not only does a shadow of dishonesty hang over the memory of Richard J. Daley, but the man was also known for his terrible habit of spoonerisms, mixing up his words in speeches and rallies. Indeed, quite contrary to Candor’s beliefs, one aide to Daley is claimed to have told a reporter, “Report what he means, not what he says!”3
Reversing the directions from Candor headquarters that Uriah gives Tris during Allegiant leads back to Erudite’s: a building that, we learn in Divergent, backs onto an alley on Monroe Street, less than a mile from Union Station, where the “Erudite live in large stone buildings that overlook the marsh.” Tris tells us, “Across from Erudite headquarters is what used to be a park. Now we just call it ‘Millennium.’” While on the trek to the Capture the Flag game, Tris can see the Bean and the other mammoth, electric-interactive statues. From Navy Pier, she can see Erudite’s lights at night.
Given that Erudite’s ideology revolves around the acquisition and retention of knowledge
, the first place that seemed possible as a headquarters was the Museum Campus, a cluster of stone buildings on the lakeshore that includes the Field Museum, the Adler Planetarium, and the Shedd Aquarium. The campus is, however, almost six miles from Union Station if Monroe, State, and Randolph are involved in travel—too far away from the other locations, such as Navy Pier and the Magnificent Mile, identified in the book. The Bean is also invisible from the campus’ stone bridge. So where else in the city is a haven for learning?
Many places. Chicago is a cultural center in the United States, and Erudite might live in the Newberry Library, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry . . . or the Art Institute, a million-square-foot behemoth that includes its own affiliated school of the arts, permanent installations of artworks, and the capacity to hold 100,000 museum visitors. Located right on the edge of Millennium Park on Michigan and Monroe Avenues, right off the Red Line train, the Art Institute seemed the perfect place for Jeanine to conduct her research.
Further evidence the Art Institute may be Erudite headquarters? Describing a photo she posted on her blog in 2010, Veronica Roth wrote: “[I]n front of the lion statue in front of the Art Institute of Chicago. You may not have heard, but the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup this year, and we’re all very excited about it. Hence the huge Blackhawks helmet on the lion’s head . . . So there you have it. A short tour through Chicago, and by proxy, through some of the scenes in DIVERGENT.”4
That run from Erudite to Candor in Allegiant is one of the only times in the series that Tris gets around Chicago purely by walking rather than taking the train. Since Chicago is the metropolitan center of the heartland, over 1,300 trains run through Chicago every day! From the longdistance Amtrak trains that seem likely to have been abandoned in Tris’ fractured world to the suburban commuter train line of the Metra, trains are one of Chicago’s most wide-ranging ways to travel.
Tris’ trains, though, are almost certainly the el: a system of eight rapid-transit trains that spider through Chicago like the spokes of a wheel, with The Loop—home to Divergent’s “Hub,” the massive skyscraper at the center of the city that Tris tells us in Divergent is the Willis (Sears) Tower—as its center. The rest of Tris’ world is so dependent on these trains—the paths between the factions running on train lines and the route to landmarks like the Hub and school accessible by train—that to make any further judgments of locations, the lines of the el needed to be added to the map.
Since Tris jumps off a train onto the roof of Dauntless headquarters, having placed the train routes should make it easier to now locate Dauntless. “The building I’m on forms one side of a square with three other buildings,” Tris tells us in Divergent. “In the center . . . is a huge hole in the concrete.” The Dauntless headquarters are also at least thirty minutes from the Hub, “far from the heart of the city,” on the same train line as the Abnegation school trains, and possess a cavern big enough to be the Pit, as well as tunnels and an overhanging platform. That’s a lot of specificity for a building that doesn’t seem to match any in modern Chicago!
A popular fan theory is that the Dauntless sequester themselves in Thompson Center, a governmental building for the state of Illinois. It is round and tall, easily accessible by Chicago’s el trains, and encompasses enough land to make up a square city block. But the Thompson is not directly under the el—a jump like the Dauntless are fond of would be nearly impossible—and it is in The Loop, the base of Chicago’s bustling downtown, located within minutes, even when walking, of the Hub. While the Thompson shares some characteristics with Dauntless’ HQ, I wasn’t satisfied with the idea of Tris, Tobias, and Tori living there.
The majority of buildings that the el trains would overhang closely enough to make the roof jump possible are in The Loop, the downtown area of the city where the biggest skyscrapers—like the Willis (Sears) Tower and Candor’s Daley Cultural Center, among others—reign. Of course, none of these massive architectural feats could be the Dauntless headquarters itself, since jumping onto their roofs would take an airplane, not a train! Also, while “train tracks loop around the Dauntless compound,” it is far from “the heart of the city” (Divergent). Tris tells us it takes thirty minutes (or more) to get to the Dauntless headquarters from the Hub by elevated train and that the tracks are seven stories high, at least, where the Dauntless make their rooftop jump. So that would take any buildings in, or near, The Loop out of the running.
Other places where trains loop around any buildings of significance are few and far between. There are some warehouses in the Lincoln Park area of the city; a few restaurants in the Gold Coast. Nowhere really seemed to match Tris’ descriptions of the sprawling compound complete with a Pit and room for many shops and venues, like Tori’s tattoo parlor.
One of the places that came to mind as a potential location is Chicago’s historic shopping attraction, Water Tower Place. The octagonal free fall of the corridors and staircases called to mind the drop that Tris recounts making as she flies through the hole in the roof, and, of course, there would be plenty of room to live, work, play, and train all in one massive compound.
Water Tower Place’s shopping center, named for (and located beside) the only surviving landmark of the Great Chicago Fire.
While there is no water in this “Water Tower Place” anymore—the water tower itself is across the street, and even that’s become an art gallery—it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine its insides gutted and retrofitted to include more natural rock formations and the treacherous Dauntless waterfall where Al met his end. Also, it is located far from the “heart of the city,” although a walk from Dauntless to Erudite or Navy Pier along the Magnificent Mile would be a snap for the well-trained Dauntless warriors.
However, there are no train tracks that overhang its roof. The closest stops let off four blocks away, and that’s too large a leap for anyone, even someone with only six fears in the world.
Water Tower Place was out. Maybe placing Abnegation, since the Dauntless pass their row houses by train to get home from the Choosing Ceremony in Divergent, would help settle the location; they should be on the same line of Chicago’s complicated, multispoked el.
The location of Abnegation is fairly concrete, although not as much as Candor’s: When the Dauntless under simulation are sent to attack Abnegation’s leaders, Tris recounts the mob’s presence at the corner of North and Fairfield. That would put Abnegation in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of the city, historic home of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago Our Lady of the Angels Catholic School, which burned in a tragic fire. Given the beliefs and dogma of Abnegation, as well as their adherence to rules similar to the Catholic vow of poverty and charity, the neighborhood seems like an appropriate one for Abnegation’s home.
Like the members of Abnegation, the residents of today’s Humboldt Park put a lot of time and energy into improving the city: in 1995, concerned citizens created the action group The United Blocks of West Humboldt Park (TUBOWHP), which aims to “enhance the livability of the area by establishing and maintaining an open line of communication and liaison between the neighborhood, government agencies and other neighborhoods” and “provide an open process by which all members of the neighborhood may involve themselves in the affairs of the neighborhood.”5
The comparisons are not all positive ones. Sadly, like Abnegation’s decimation by Jeanine’s simulation, the area has long been a victim of the city’s epidemic of violence. The Division Street Riots gripped the neighborhood in 1966, and in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, various street gangs—the Young Lords, the Latin Kings, the Spanish Cobras, the Latin Disciples—grappled for domination of the area. Eventually, the Young Lords, who originated in the Humboldt Park area—and wore Abnegation gray—teamed up with the neighborhood’s government and community organizers to aid in the repairs of the neighborhood. They also took a stand for better protections for Puerto Rican citizens in Chicago, which may be alluded to t
hrough the Abnegation’s work with the factionless in Divergent.6
Putting Abnegation’s faction headquarters at the intersection of North and Fairfield sets it right at the City Colleges of Chicago’s Humboldt Park Vocational Education Center of Wright College, an adult outreach school specializing in nursing—an appropriate place for Abnegation, who focus so much on helping others. There are also Catholic churches in the vicinity from where the faction could be led. The Vocational Education Center is accessible by the el’s Blue Line train, so Tris, Caleb, and, once upon a time, Tobias could have taken this route from Humboldt Park to the big multifaction school in The Loop.
However, we can’t use the Blue Line to guess at Dauntless’ headquarters location. We know that the Dauntless ride a different path to school than the Abnegation since Tris, when she was Beatrice, would wait and watch them disembark from their own train every day at school: “I pause by a window in the E Wing and wait for the Dauntless to arrive. I do this every morning. At exactly 7:25, the Dauntless prove their bravery by jumping from a moving train” (Divergent). While Tris passes the Abnegation neighborhood on her way to Dauntless HQ after the Choosing Ceremony, the two trains are certainly on different lines—different paths—and intersect primarily at the school.
