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Divergent: Utopia And Dystopian Societies

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“Divergent” has probably been one of the most popular post-apocalyptic books in this past century. Utopian and dystopian novels have been all the rage with teens more recently. Whether it be “The Maze Runner” or “The Hunger Games” all these books and now movies have something similar in common. They all showcase a society in which there is no social justice of the classes. There is a lower class that is constantly trying to overthrow the upper class that is in control of all of them. In “Divergent” (Burger, 2014) it is quite easy to see even within the first few scenes of the movie that the “Erudite” faction is definitely the group that is in power or wants to gain that power over the rest of the groups of people. One might say that this is …show more content…

According to Naiman (2012), a social class is a group which have “a distinct relation to the means of production..” Each society will have different hierarchies and labels that divide the population into different social classes. Social classes are different in each society. Generally speaking, how social classes are divided all depends on how distal or relative one would be to resources. The ownership of resources is different from someone working to make resources and therefore they would be in two different social classes. “Class conflict” is summed up with “the unequal distribution of resources…also the consequent unequal distribution of power.” (Naiman, 2012) Class conflict is a very popular theme as it is something that society within itself has struggled with for many years. Class conflict has manifested itself in many ways. Whether it be the white slave owner or black slave, the male dominance over government and the household or the Monseigneur’s glamorous lifestyle shadowing over the poor peasants empty plates, class conflict has been around/depicted for a very long time. In books like “The Tale of Two Cities” (Dickens, 1859) class conflict is very evident in terms of there being one dominating class with the majority of the power. Class conflict is a problem for the minority classes because “the greatest power in any society is held by those who own or control the means of production and, as a result, are able to extract surpluses from large numbers of people who must do their bidding in order to survive.” (Naiman, 2012) The societal conflicts usually are based on what type of person/who has the power and what they are doing with it. Because of the inequality of the power and status’ of each of the social classes, what usually happens is that the lower classes want to rebel in order to gain equality.

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