History Headscratchers / Divergent

* How was Peter even able to complete a HeelFaceTurn via memory loss? Every single thing he does in all three books just reeks of AmbiguousDisorder, probably related to psychopathy in some way. If there's truly a mental illness at play here, which there almost certainly is, then just wiping his brain of memory alone and not altering anything else shouldn't have done jack to solve that problem in any way. Should we just assume that said disorder was caused solely by a traumatic memory, and nothing else? Because if that's the case, then there was certainly nothing in the book that hinted at it. Not to be the Erudite here, but sometimes your life choices ''are'' overruled by genetics, you know.

*** Possibly is was group B, and the Amity people change the name on a regular basis because their hat is bickering over everything democratically? Seems like a faction defined by its pre-teen mental state would swap to whatever name seemed coolest on a regular basis.

** Or maybe one of the services that Abnegation provides for the Factionless is birth control, either offered openly on the grounds that "Your lives are hard enough, but you can spare innocent children from enduring that hardship", or covertly by drugging the food distributed to Factionless adults.

* The Bureau [[spoiler:keeps track of the lineage of every person in the Chicago experiment]], and marks the factions with letters. Since A is used for Abnegation, what's the marker for Amity?

* Since the point of the faction system was ultimately [[spoiler:to create Divergents]], with [[spoiler:people entering the community legally obligated to have children]], what happened to children born to Factionless parents? Certainly [[spoiler:the Bureau would WANT people to pass on their genes with the hope of creating more Divergents]], but nowhere in the stories is this seemingly addressed.

* How was Peter even able to [[spoiler:complete a HeelFaceTurn via memory loss]]? Every single thing he does in all three books just reeks of AmbiguousDisorder, probably related to psychopathy in some way. If there's truly a mental illness at play here, which there almost certainly is, then [[spoiler:just wiping his brain of memory alone and not altering anything else]] shouldn't have done jack to solve that problem in any way. Should we just assume that said disorder [[spoiler:was caused solely by a traumatic memory, and nothing else]]? Because if that's the case, then there was certainly nothing in the book that hinted at it. Not to be the Erudite here, but sometimes your life choices ''are'' overruled by genetics, you know.
** [[spoiler: The epilogue tells us that some of his {{Jerkass}} behavior came back.]]

* When [[spoiler:the Bureau]] sent [[spoiler: Natalie]] to infiltrate the city, one suggested faction choice was ''Candor''. Does that seem right? You have a person who's trying to keep the biggest imaginable secret, and you think putting that person in a group of ''living lie detectors'' is a good option?
** [[spoiler: If Natalie could resist the truth serum like Tris then passing Candor initiation would remove all suspicion of her being involved with anything outside the city. Considering Tris is the only one who is shown to be able to resist the Candor serum it's a big if but it's something.]]

* When Peter and his friends de-towel Tris in the first book, why was she not wearing any underwear? Molly makes a comment about seeing her butt which implies she was completely naked. But surely she had underwear on when she tried on her pants in the bathroom? Yes, she took them off because they were too small for her, but why would she take her pants AND underwear off?
** Possibly just a continuity goof. Or else her pants were so tight, she accidentally pulled her underwear off too. Or she was just wearing small panties that rode up and her butt was showing.

** Some of the rumours being spread are actually true - although it's explained slightly better in the prequel novel. Eric knows that Four is Marcus Eaton's son, and guesses that Marcus was abusive. As he's the sneak for Jeanine, it's that little nugget of information that really starts Erudite on their smear campaign. It's also explained that Marcus is ''very'' concerned with his public image, and has a lot of his colleagues working to make sure he appears like a squeaky-clean do-gooder. So the reason Marcus doesn't do this is because he doesn't want his actual dirty laundry being confirmed. You'll notice when the Priors are discussing it, Andrew and Natalie seem to think that the abuse allegations are just lies. Abnegation is still pretty corrupt too, since Evelyn runs away and they cover it up as her dying rather than tarnish Marcus's image. Abnegation seemed to think that if they just ignore the rumours - which dog most politicians - the public will too. The saying "the best way to respond to stupidity is to ignore it" comes into play, and Abnegation look as if taking the high road would be the better option. They don't know that Jeanine is planning to mind control the Dauntless into mass genocide.

* Pardon a query from someone who only saw the films, but how come Abnegation's leaders never took pains to debunk the nasty rumors about their faction hoarding resources for themselves? They'd certainly ''know'' such allegations were being made, because Candor comes out and says what they're thinking to everyone's face, and they'd be obligated under their own ethics to do so: it'd help their fellow Abnegation by sparing them from baseless accusations, and likewise help the other factions by easing their fears about corruption within the government. Truth serum can't be unknown to Abnegation's leaders - it's used in the legal system and by a faction that doesn't believe in hiding facts - so they could easily have stopped the rumors by voluntarily letting themselves be questioned about resource-hoarding under its influence. So why don't they publically offer Erudite and Candor the chance to jointly, scientifically, and openly test Abnegation's resource-allocation officers under the truth serum's effects, and disprove the allegations once and for all? With anyone else, it'd be an affront to personal dignity to forfeit one's privacy and be subjected to such public scrutiny, but Abnegation aren't supposed to ''have'' personal dignity or pride.

* Pardon a query from someone who only saw the films, but how come Abnegation's leaders never took pains to debunk down the nasty rumors about their faction hoarding resources for themselves? They'd certainly ''know'' such allegations were being made, because Candor comes out and says what they're thinking to everyone's face, and they'd be obligated under their own ethics to do so: it'd help their fellow Abnegation by sparing them from baseless accusations, and likewise help the other factions by easing their fears about corruption within the government. Truth serum can't be unknown to Abnegation's leaders - it's used in the legal system and by a faction that doesn't believe in hiding facts - so they could easily have stopped the rumors by voluntarily letting themselves be questioned about resource-hoarding under its influence. So why don't they publically offer Erudite and Candor the chance to jointly, scientifically, and openly test Abnegation's resource-allocation officers under the truth serum's effects, and disprove the allegations once and for all? With anyone else, it'd be an affront to personal dignity to forfeit one's privacy and be subjected to such public scrutiny, but Abnegation aren't supposed to ''have'' personal dignity or pride.

** The film sort of dropped the ball on what passed for an underlying theme in the book, though: the categories all being pretty much nonsense that each faction found a different (and usually mutually-contradictory) way to justify for themselves was sort of a big deal, and the experiment the underlying conspiracy was running was to see how long it took people raised with an intentionally ridiculous system as "tradition" to figure it out (it was implied that they weren't expecting it to last for generations as it did). For the Erudite, they justify the system by the (false) impression that they're more technically inclined and logical than everyone else, so assigning entirely meaningless percentile values to a meaningless abstraction is them being in-character.

** Well this particular thing wasn't in the book, and it was invented for the film. I'm guessing Tris got a high rating because she had gone through Dauntless training, passed their tests (I can't remember if it's said that the other factions require tests too) and also gone through a lot of CharacterDevelopment.

* In the second film, how is the Erudite Divergent detector able to express degrees of Divergence (Example: It rates Tris as "100 percent Divergent")? Divergence is established as a combination of the other five traits, rather than a trait in itself, so how do you even calculate "X percent Divergent?" Shouldn't the result be rendered as the degree to which each of the other five is present? And for that matter, how do you quantify the degree to which particular personality traits exist in order to calculate a percentage in the first place? We're talking about an abstract concept here, something that has no physical presence or numerical attributes associated with it.

* Maybe the children that are born to Factionless parents are expected to be given up for adoption at birth.

** The book mentions somewhere that Candor frequently wear black-and-white together