Theme Analysis

What if you were forced to choose between staying with your parents, but following their faction's rules, or going away and rarely seeing them? What if you had to decide whether to kill your boyfriend or killing yourself? What if you could either run away from all you ever knew, or let the government choose how you spend the rest of your life? Imagine, being practically brainwashed from an evil political figure that you made an idol. Many novels and real life situations involve the government taking over and creating a chaotic incident.

In the book, Divergent, by Veronica Ross, the population is split into five different factions. The faction centered around intelligence is rebelling against the selfless faction, who runs the government, but the intelligence faction doesn't have any fighting power. They turn to the daring faction and meet with some of the leaders to devise a plan. Against the will of any of the young people in the daring faction, they inject a tracker into them, saying that it was simply a tracking device, a precaution in case they got lost. This injection turns out to be able to control what each young person does. Literally, they all wake up in the middle of the night and their legs and arms are moving for them. They are forced to go kill as many government figures as they can, which includes some of their own parents. No one except for the leaders of the two factions was involved in this decision to go kill so many innocent people.

Another example of the theme of Government Control is the book, Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. In this book, 24 people are literally put in an arena and forced to fight until only one is left alive. This is another example of a government putting teenagers and young kids in really difficult situations. In the book, the two main characters don't want to kill each other so they try to commit suicide and go against the government. You can tell just how controlling this government is just because of the situation they put these kids in, and because of how angry they get after the two main characters try to stand up to them. In this novel, the government is actually putting their own people in danger as well.

The Giver, by Lois Lowry is another example of complete Government Control. In this book, the government controls every aspect of your life; who you will marry, what your career will be, how many kids you have, and even what you can say. Babies are snatched away from whoever had them, and put into a Nurturing House until they are one. Then, they are literally assigned a family, not the one that had them, just so that each family can have one boy and one girl. Then, once they turn twelve, their career is chosen for them, and they begin training for it. Later in life, they choose who you marry by matching characteristics and then eventually assign you a child. It's really difficult to imagine not being able to choose anything in your life.  The government in this book wants everything the same, so that no one feels different and so no one stands out.

These three books all include people who are living an entirely tragic life. The government is controlling much of their life. A similarity between all three books is that no one has a say in the government. The few people in charge make harsh decisions about how all of the people need to be, and what decisions they are allowed to make.  In my opinion, a big part of life is being allowed to have a say in your government. It's important for us to be our own people and have our own opinions. It allows us to have a personality, to choose our own paths in life, and to choose who we want to spend it with. In America, we are able to vote for who we want to lead us, and for what we want to do. If a leader makes a poor decision, he can be removed from office in the next election, and the law can be repealed. We are so lucky to be living in a society like this where we are able to have a say -- we need to keep it that way.