We just blew $4.99 renting "Divergent." This makes me think of 'Hunger Games,' we both said. It wasn't that good, Mike said. I kind of liked it, I countered. Normally, that would have been the end of our intellectualizing about the film, but the protagonist's name was stuck in my head.
The film's heroine is a teenage girl named Beatrice. Like all 16-year-olds in her society, Beatrice has to choose her social group. She can pick the group into which she was born, or she can join a different group if she is willing to walk away from her family. The social order in this future world consists of five classes known as factions plus a sixth group who have failed to fit in anywhere, the Factionless. Beatrice comes from the group known as Abnegation. They are selfless, social worker types. Because they always put others first, the Abnegation faction runs government. The other four groups are Amity (peace loving, staring-at-the-navel types), Candor (honest, blurt-out-the-first thing-that-pops-into-the-head types), Dauntless (brave, dare-devil types), and Erudite (the brainiacs). All the sweet 16's take an aptitude test. They can choose their faction based on their test results or they can go rogue and pick a faction based on their whims. Whatever they pick, they are stuck with for life. Beatrice gets a test result that is cause for alarm. Unlike most people who are strong in only one area, Beatrice is equally strong in three areas. This makes her a Divergent. Divergents are a threat to the world order, and they are exterminated. The sympathetic test administrator lies about Beatrice's result, recording in the official records that Beatrice is an Abnegation-type, like her parents. She advises Beatrice to pick Abnegation as her life's work and never to reveal her real results.
Beatrice, who knows she could do equally well in Abnegation, Dauntless, or Erudite, ignores the advice of the tester to go into social work and joins the Dauntless group. During her training phase, Beatrice discovers the Erudites want to rule the world. They are planning to overthrow the Abnegation government. They will accomplish this by injecting the Dauntless group with mind control drugs, turning them into zombie soldiers. Mind control only works on a full Dauntless. As a Divergent, Beatrice is immune to the drugs. She and her Dauntless mentor (another Divergent personality, it turns out) foil the Erudite coup. After their victory, Beatrice and a some others hop on a train and head for the end of the line. I'm sure a sequel will follow for Beatrice, her mentor/boyfriend, and the others on the train. The movie is based on a trilogy of teen books written by Veronica Roth. The movie "Divergent" follows the first of the three books.
Here's the thing about Beatrice's name. When she begins Dauntless training, she is told to pick a new name. She picks the name Tris. Sure, Tris is short for Beatrice, but so is Bea. I knew I had heard that word before, so I looked it up. Tris is tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane. It's an organic compound which is used as a buffering agent. Buffering agents keep things stable. For example, buffering agents stabilize shampoo at a slightly acidic level because that's what you need to get the cleanest hair. Brewers use buffering agents to keep the pH of fermenting beverages stable. Yeast needs a stable pH to do it's work - creating alcohol. Society in this movie needed Tris/Beatrice to prevent all hell from breaking lose. She far, she has prevented things from breaking down, though I don't know what happens in books two and three of the trilogy.
It was all over the internet that the names Ana and Mia in Fifty Shades of Grey stood for anorexia and bulimia. Did Veronica Roth select Tris as a nickname because she wanted to add an extra layer of significance to the character? Did she want to appeal to the chemistry geeks? I figured someone out there must have made the Tris connection besides me, but Google as I might, I didn't find anything. Whatever it is or isn't, I got a kick out of retrieving some high school chemistry from the memory banks. Thank you, Mrs. Hearon.
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