EVELYN’S SPEECH
TO THE FACTIONLESS
FACTIONLESS GATHERING,
FIVE YEARS BEFORE THE
EVENTS OF DIVERGENT
TO THE FACTIONLESS
FACTIONLESS GATHERING,
FIVE YEARS BEFORE THE
EVENTS OF DIVERGENT
“WELCOME. WELCOME, EVERYONE.
“I must ask you to look around you.
No, I mean it—go ahead and look.
“Standing to your left is someone an
Erudite would call an aberration. Standing to your right is someone an
Abnegation would call a charity case. Behind you is someone an Amity would look
at with pity. In front of you is someone a Candor or a Dauntless would ignore
completely.
“All around you there are people who
couldn’t cut it in a faction’s initiation, couldn’t cut it as a faction
member—people who failed, in one way or another, to meet the expectations of
their society. This is a room full of failures.
“Right? Isn’t that what we’ve been
told?
“They tell us, in this city, that
those who live outside of the factions are weaker than those who live inside
them. They tell us that their society is a well-oiled machine that runs
perfectly as long as everyone participates. They tell us that the system will
help us to grow into morally superior people, to become who we need to be. And
they also tell us—most heinously of all—that they have given us a choice.
“I am here today to tell you that
they are liars. They have been lying to you all your lives. If you are so weak,
why does this city make you its backbone? Why does it depend on you to drive
its trains and its buses, to maintain its facilities and equipment, to create
the very fabric—the literal fabric—of
its existence? If you are such failures, then why does the system depend on your failure in order to
function? A system that cannot survive without the exclusion of some of its
members is not a well-oiled machine; it is broken.
“It is broken, and the illusion of
choice that it offers you is no choice at all. Choosing a faction is like
choosing death by knife, gun, or hanging—the result is the same no matter what
method you use.
“But in this case, the result isn’t
death of the body; it’s death of the soul—death of the individual’s richness
and complexity, the very things that make people worth loving, worth being. When you were asked to choose a
faction, you were asked to disappear, piece by piece, until only a shadow of
you was left. That shadow may have worn your clothes and kissed your spouse
good-bye and performed the work to which you were assigned, but it was not you;
it could never have been you.
“When they look at you, they may see
someone who has faded away, but that is a lie. Let me tell you the truth: You
are the ones who were unwilling to fade away. You are the ones who were brave,
honest, kind, selfless, or smart, and more than any of those things, more than
any words can describe.
“And the people who keep that
pathetic, broken machine running know this. On some level they sense that you
are far greater, far larger, far more powerful than they can possibly imagine.
That is why they starve you, deprive you of homes and clean clothing and
representation in government. They want you to be silent, and weak, and
desperate. Since they can’t control you with the system, they want to control
you with distraction. They want you to be so busy thinking of your next meal
that you aren’t thinking about what has been done to you. They want you to feel
that you are utterly and completely alone.
“But you are not failures, and you
are not alone. Those who are gathered in this room are not your fellow faction
members, wasting away in self-denial—they are your brothers and sisters, your
dearest friends, your fellow soldiers. Let us be knit together, not by
commitment to empty ideals, to a narrow existence, but by our thirst for a
better life.
“It is time to fight. If we are
desperate, let it be for an end to this broken system, no matter the cost. If
we hunger, let it be for freedom from the factions. And if we are silent, let
it be for only a moment as we draw breath for our battle cry.”
