They will see him as a traitor from now on. They will have the option of visiting him, a week and a half from now on Visiting Day, but they won’t, because he left them. His absence will haunt their hallways, and he will be a space his former family can’t fill. And then time will pass, and the hole will be gone, like when an organ is removed and the body’s fluids flow into the space it leaves. Humans can’t tolerate emptiness for long.
“Caleb Prior,” says Marcus.
Caleb squeezes my hand one last time, and as he walks away, smiles gently casts a long look at me over his shoulder. I watch his feet move, swiftly and surely, to the center of the room, and his hands, steady as they accept the knife from Marcus, deft as one presses the knife into the other. He stretches Then he stands with blood pooling in his hand over the abnegation bowl palm, and blood drips his lip snags on the rocks. My father nods with approval his teeth.
If He breathes out. And then in. And then he had taken longer, I could have had time holds his hand over the Erudite bowl, and his blood drips into the water, turning it a deeper shade of red.
I hear mutters that lift into outraged cries. I can barely think straight. My brother, my selfless brother, a faction transfer? My brother, born for Abnegation, Erudite?
When I close my eyes, I see the stack of books on Caleb’s desk, and his shaking hands sliding along his legs after the aptitude test. Why didn’t I realize that when he told me to think of myself yesterday, he was also giving that advice to himself?
I scan the crowd of the Erudite—they wear smug smiles and nudge one another. The Abnegation, normally so placid, speak to one another in tense whispers and glare across the room at the faction that has become our enemy.
“Excuse me,” says Marcus, but the crowd doesn’t hear him. He shouts, “Quiet, please!”
The room goes silent. Except for a ringing sound.
I hear my name, over the ringing in my ears, and a shudder propels me forward. Halfway to the bowls, I am sure that I will choose Abnegation. I can see it now. I watch myself grow into a woman in Abnegation robes, marrying Susan’s brother, Robert, volunteering on the weekends, the peace of routine, the quiet nights spent in front of the fireplace, the certainty that I will be safe, and if not good enough, better than I am now.
The ringing, I realize, is in my ears.
I look at Caleb, who now stands behind the Erudite. He stares back at me and nods a little, like he knows what I’m thinking and he agrees. My footsteps falter. But if Caleb wasn’t fit for Abnegation, how can I be? But what choice do I have, now that he left us and I’m the only one who remains? He left me no other option.
I set my jaw. I will be the child who stays; I have to do this for my parents; I have to.
Marcus offers me the my knife. I look into his eyes—they are dark blue, a strange color—and take it. He nods, and I turn toward the bowls. The Dauntless fire and the Abnegation stones are both on my left, one in front of my shoulder and one behind. I hold the knife in my right hand and touch the blade to the meaty part of my left thumb palm. Gritting my teeth, I drag the blade down. It stings, but I barely notice. I hold both hands to my chest, and my next breath shudders on the way out.
I open my eyes and thrust my arm out. My blood drips onto the carpet between the two bowls. Then, with a gasp I can’t contain, I shift my hand forward, and my blood sizzles on the coals.
I am selfish. I am brave.
Rough Draft Caleb was intentionally flat, but revising so that Caleb chose Erudite breathed air into him, making him round and morally ambiguous. He was secretive about his Erudite leanings and cunning in his keen ability to pretend to be the perfect Abnegation. And because his Abnegation act was just that—an act—he also showed us that he was strangely intentional about overshadowing his sister in the eyes of his parents. Yet he was also someone who risked his life to take down the Dauntless attack simulation with Tris, who took Tris’s warning in Erudite headquarters to heart enough to abandon his faction and join his parents at the end of Divergent.
When he chose Erudite, he became far more than just a window into Erudite headquarters, so that we observed and understood their faction on the page—Caleb’s choice made him into a major character in the series, growing steadily more nuanced and complicated as it progressed. Which is how one note from one critique—“we need to see the other factions more”—turned a side character who might have stayed forever in the background into one of my favorite characters in the entire series.
RENDERINGS OF CHOOSING CEREMONY BOWLS
FEAR AND YOUR BRAIN:
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE OF EXPOSURE THERAPY BEHIND DIVERGENT
BRIAN J. MISTLER, PHD
“LEARNING HOW TO think in the midst of fear,” Four says to Tris, “is a lesson that everyone . . . needs to learn.” As we read Divergent, we see Tris and Four learn to manage their fear . . . but how? The Dauntless are obsessed with fear, and it is such a central and powerful emotion that we find it mentioned over one hundred times in Divergent. The science behind Veronica Roth’s imagined world can help us understand even more deeply what Tris is experiencing and even help us manage fear in our own lives.
What actually makes it so difficult to, as Four says, “think in the midst of fear”? A number of things happen biologically when we are confronted with a situation we perceive as threatening. For instance, when Four climbs the Ferris wheel in spite of his fear of heights, his brain begins releasing chemicals that cause sweating, his breathing rate increases, and his muscles energize. All of this is a natural part of the fight-or-flight response, helpful when you need to run away, but not when you’re trying to climb a dilapidated Ferris wheel during a game of capture the flag to scout your competition.
In Four’s case, the response is triggered by his fear of heights, but the stimulus evoking fear could be anything—a spider, a snake, or the thought of being onstage in front of an auditorium full of people. Indeed, the brain is a profoundly complex organ with over a hundred billion nerve cells making up an intricate neural network that processes data from the world around us. How our brain recognizes and responds to patterns in this data may lead to conscious thoughts or it may produce autonomic responses—those that our body performs automatically. The fear response is almost entirely autonomic, and we usually only recognize the huge changes going on well after our body is responding.
If fear is such an automatic and core part of us, can we ever really get rid of our fears, or is fear something we learn to act in spite of? These are common and important questions that Tris and each of us wrestle with: What makes “me” . . . me? Are my fears at the core of who I am? If so, do I even want to get rid of my fears? What if I don’t like who I am with my fears? Can I get over them? Should I? If so, how?
The true secret to “eradicate cowardice,” as Four says, is preparation . . . but remember that cowardice is different from fear. Sometimes, fear can actually be helpful, depending on our relationship to it. For instance, Tris’s fears of losing her independence, of the misuse of the Dauntless by the Erudite, and the dangers of continuing to trust those who have betrayed her are all important to her staying alive. But while fear gives us important information, if we are not careful, it can hold us back from accomplishing things that are important to us. If Tris hadn’t overcome her fear of disappointing her parents at the Choosing Ceremony, she never would have joined Dauntless and wouldn’t have met and fallen in love with Four. Tris makes this courageous move of differentiation not because she has no fear, but in spite of it. As she says after getting to know her new faction, “I used to think the Dauntless were fearless. . . . But maybe what I saw as fearless was actually fear under control.” We grapple with fear, whether we realize it or not, each time we sit in a classroom deciding whether to raise our hand, or in the midst of romantic relationship or career decisions, asking, “Is this the person or vocation I want for my life . . . or am I simply afraid to disappoint someone by taking the step I know I need to?”
While psychology
cannot answer these questions with certainty, it can give us tools so we can take Four’s advice and “learn to control our fears.” When you think of working with a therapist, perhaps you think about two people sitting in a room talking about childhood problems. This kind of personal work can be of huge benefit for a range of concerns and “big” life issues, but one of the most scientifically validated approaches to changing concrete behaviors, such as our situation-specific fear responses, is a cognitive behavioral therapy–based approach called “exposure therapy.”
The scientific principles of exposure therapy are skillfully woven into Divergent in various forms, all of which share the same foundation: principles explored by Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov more than seven decades ago. These principles, seen throughout Divergent, have to do with breaking the chain of a stimulus (the thing we are afraid of) and our body’s response to that stimulus (which we experience as fear). For instance, when Tris is trapped underwater, she must learn to prevent her normal chain of response to whatever makes her afraid, because that normal response actually leads to a strengthening of the fear response. Each time she undergoes the simulation, she gets better at it.
Will says about the simulations at one point, “It’s really fascinating how it all works. It’s basically a struggle between your thalamus, which is producing the fear, and your frontal lobe, which makes decisions.” Let’s explore this, starting with the thalamus. The thalamus sits between the cerebral cortex and the midbrain. When our eyes “see” things, like when Tris sees water pouring into the box in which she is trapped, inputs from the retina are sent to the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus before being processed in the visual cortex. Meanwhile, the frontal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in your brain, and is critical in attention and planning. What is termed executive function of the frontal lobe includes the ability to recognize future consequences resulting from current actions; the frontal lobe helps us make decisions. Thalamic nuclei, or clusters of neurons in the thalamus (which, remember, have information about what you’re seeing), have strong reciprocal connections with the frontal lobe and other areas of the cerebral cortex, forming circuits that play a role in overall consciousness. In other words, your thalamus sends information about a situation to your frontal lobe, and your frontal lobe helps figure out what to do about it.
Let’s get even more specific. That sensory information from the thalamus travels to areas like the prefrontal cortex via dopaminergic pathways—networks of nerve cells called axons that transmit the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine receptors in the amygdala—another area of the brain that helps to decode emotions and determine possible threats—also contribute to how we develop specific fears.
Two other important brain regions are involved in the fear process Tris experiences: the hippocampus, which stores and retrieves memories that help establish context for the stimuli, and the hypothalamus, which activates the fight-or-flight responses in the body. The hippocampus is what helps Tris’s brain know that the feeling of being wet, plus visual cues like the rising water level, mean “I’m trapped underwater.” The hypothalamus subsequently stimulates two major endocrine (or hormonal) systems: the hypothalamic-anterior pituitary-adrenomedullary axis (HPA) and the sympatho-adrenomedullary axis (SAM). Activation of the HPA releases the stress hormone cortisol from the adrenal cortex, while activation of the SAM causes release of adrenaline and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH). These hormones traveling through the bloodstream activate the release of other hormones and help the body respond to the perceived danger by increasing heart rate (which is why Tris feels her heart racing) and diverting blood to help basic life functions. This diversion of blood also explains why you might feel a chill (as veins in the skin constrict) or why Tris has trouble focusing.
“Don’t panic,” Tris tells herself when she finds herself underwater in the simulation—but it’s no use. Her heart continues to race and her “thoughts scatter.” This is because in a battle between the executive functioning of the frontal lobe and the more primitive and autonomic parts of the brain, “willpower” will almost always lose when fear is strong.
This is why the progressive and hierarchical part of exposure therapy is so important. Start small and build up. Dauntless initiation uses the principles of progressive exposure therapy in many ways. By progressive exposure to ever more intensive and terrifying trials while preventing fear responses, Tris and the other initiates are able to overcome their fears. When Tris first jumps onto the moving train, she is terrified, but by the end of the book she is leading others to make the jump. This transition doesn’t happen instantly. Rather, Tris’s ability to respond differently develops slowly over time as she is exposed to progressively stronger and stronger stimuli until habituation—a new learned response—is reached.
Indeed, the progressive part is a vital piece of the puzzle. Exposure therapy involves the creation of a program of steadily escalating hierarchy of fear-inducing stimuli, beginning with something that produces just a little fear, and ending with something that is outright terrifying. As an individual voluntarily moves to more and more challenging levels in the hierarchy, they systematically break the connection between the stimulus that induced fear (let’s say being trapped in a box filling with water, as Tris is) and the response, which includes everything from the physiological changes of heart racing and difficulty thinking to the actions to try to escape. Indeed, when Tris first tries to stand still while she has knives thrown past her, she is afraid (though she makes a strong effort to keep from showing it). Yet by the time the Erudite attack Abnegation, Tris is able to run in front of flying bullets.
Your average therapist would use a much gentler, safer, and more collaborative approach, but the theory is the same. With the support of a professional, you might make a list of progressive levels of scariness—maybe seeing a picture of a spider is a little scary, then seeing a real spider in a cage, and worst is having even a nonpoisonous one on your arm. Again with professional guidance, you might then sit with the photo for longer and longer periods until your anxiety is gone, and soon you’ll be able to get near a cage you never would have thought possible. This is because the fear and fear-response connection pathways in the brain have been severed. This is similar to how Four deliberately acts in spite of his fear, walking along the pathways in the Pit and being exposed to heights in his fear landscape while preventing his old response (perhaps running away). Without training with these fear-inducing stimuli that are lower on Four’s exposure therapy hierarchy in order to help himself progressively break his fear response to heights, climbing to the top of the Ferris wheel would be way more difficult than it already is.
Note that while deliberate association can be used to break associations, it can also be used to create them. The fields of advertising and marketing have been deeply shaped by these psychological principles—when shown a picture of a product in the hands of a famous young celebrity who embodies the traits you want (sexy, successful, popular, and happy, for example), your brain makes an implicit connection: “If I buy that product, I will have those qualities.” Still, Tris learned it’s not that easy—joining a fearless group such as the Dauntless doesn’t magically get rid of her fears, and change takes work.
In the end, psychology is a tool, and Four’s wisdom shared with Tris in between hallucinations is very wise indeed: “Becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it, that’s the point.” The science and tools of psychology can be powerful, helping us to achieve this freedom. Exposure therapy, and various personality tests, career counseling, psychotherapy, and other psychological tools can help you on your path as they did Tris. The task of figuring out who you are, apart from fears learned from others and what your parents and society want for you, is one of the most important tasks of early adulthood (and beyond). The self is not a given, but a creation—your creation, made with each of your choices. Most change ha
ppens slowly as we recognize and confront fears daily. Today, you might ask yourself, “What do I want to do starting now to understand my fears, and how can what I learn help me keep the parts of myself I like, and begin to change those that don’t serve me well as I grow into who I want to become?”
DIVERGENT
AN EXCERPT FROM
THE OFFICIAL MOVIE SCRIPT
INT. TRAIN - MOVING - LATER
Four, Eric, the transfers, and some of the Dauntless-born initiates are crowded into the train car. Four drops a heavy sack onto the floor.
FOUR
The game’s simple, like Capture the Flag.
ERIC
Weapon of choice . . .
Eric pulls an ODD-LOOKING GUN from a sack full of guns.
MOLLY
Call that a gun?
Eric shoots her and she drops to the ground, WAILING IN PAIN.
ERIC
Neuro-stim dart. Simulates the pain of a real gunshot . . . only lasts a couple minutes.
He hands out the weapons.
ERIC (CONT’D)
Two teams. Four and I are captains.
FOUR
You pick first.
ERIC
OK. Edward.
FOUR
I’ll take the stiff.
Tris looks at him, surprised.
ERIC
Picking the weak ones so you have someone to blame when you lose?
FOUR
Something like that.
She just looks at him, wondering if he means it.
EXT. NAVY PIER - NIGHT
Tris and Four’s team jogs through the dark and onto the wreckage that is now the old amusement pier.
CHRISTINA
Where did Eric’s team go?
Divergent Collector's Edition Page 35
