Outside the walls - (spoilers)

Discuss the June 2014 book of the month Divergent by Veronica Roth. While only Divergent--the first book of the series--is the book of the month, feel free to use this subforum to discuss the rest of the series or to talk about the movies, but make sure not to post spoilers unless noted in the topic title.
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Aithne
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Outside the walls - (spoilers)

Post by Aithne »

What do you think of those who live outside the borders of the divergent city? What do you think of their actions? Do you think they have done the right thing to watch and wait, or that they are as bad or worse than the people they watch like a soap?
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Post by hannahbm13 »

Honestly the way they just watch and wait to see what happens reminds me somewhat of the Hunger Games. I definitely think it was wrong of them to allow this to happen, but I don't really know what I would have done differently.
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Post by Morgan_Malone »

I think they were in the wrong to just watch while this uprising happened and all of these people died unnecessarily. I feel like they could have come in, explained everything, and a lot of deaths could have been avoided.
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Post by kaitykinetic »

I think that they have been raised to not see the people within the walls as human, simply as a live action experiment. While I definitely don't condone their actions, I think that they would be more much inhumane if they were watching it as entertainment. I think they truly believe that their work is for the good of all, even though they are extremely wrong in doing so.
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Post by Bobbi13045 »

I think in a way they are the ones that should have been in more than one faction. I don't think they should have just watched the people inside the walls, they could have made their own cities, etc. and had a somewhat normal life. I don't think they should have sat and done nothing about the uprising, I think they could have at least tried to help.

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Post by Mallory Whitaker »

kaitykinetic wrote: 15 Jul 2016, 12:29 I think that they have been raised to not see the people within the walls as human, simply as a live action experiment. While I definitely don't condone their actions, I think that they would be more much inhumane if they were watching it as entertainment. I think they truly believe that their work is for the good of all, even though they are extremely wrong in doing so.
I agree. I think their society has really dehumanized the people within the walls. They're like the rats in our experiments. I also agree that they're not as bad as those who watched them for entertainment, but they're not guiltless either. Maybe just ignorant?
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Post by labibliofile »

Even though it was extremely wrong and twisted, for those who live outside the walls, those within the walls are defective or faulty humans who need to be "corrected" in some way so they view them as animals in an experiment and not as human beings. In that sense, even we are in the wrong as many animals are used, harmed and killed during experiments.
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Post by sush_destiny »

hannahbm13 wrote: 26 Nov 2015, 13:46 Honestly the way they just watch and wait to see what happens reminds me somewhat of the Hunger Games. I definitely think it was wrong of them to allow this to happen, but I don't really know what I would have done differently.
It reminded me of the Hunger Games too! yes, it was wrong of them to watch the massacre from the sidelines and not do anything about it.
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Post by dorebri2020 »

I found the people outside the walls infuriating. Their compliance to sit outside the walls and accept that people will be harmed like animals is absolutely inhumane, especially when they had the resources to help.
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Post by Atara Miles »

They basically segregrated a whole people without their knowledge or choice simply because they wanted pure genes. That's messed up - but in the end it's kinda human nature? Don't we quarantine infected people to preserve our lives? Divergent just seems like an extension of that in some ways.
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Post by Balena »

I do not believe that it is fair that they watched many people dying and separated a whole group of people into five factions, watching them as if they were just experiments that hold no value.
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Post by Barbara Larkin »

When you adopt the role of bystander to other people's suffering or going through a bad thing you're almost as responsible as that bad thing. Their refusal to choose to be apart of it was simultaneously brave and cowardly,
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Post by kirthana_shivakumar »

I think they were treating some humans as experiment rats and I believe that this is wrong no matter the intention. We cannot lose our humanity by doing such things in the name of "improving humanity".
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Post by jimmy02 »

Everyone here is mentioning Hunger Games, but this reminds me more of James Dashner's Maze Runner. The outsiders simply watch on from the sidelines, as the researchers did in Maze Runner with the test subjects that had been planted in the Maze.
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Post by Inks and Quills »

I think they thought they were in the right from a scientific perspective. However, their experiment clearly wasn’t ethical in any way.
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