SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING AND DESIGN

THE DESIGN SCHOOL

FOUNDATION IN NATURAL BUILD ENVIRONMENT

NAME: LEE XIN YING

STUDENT ID NO: 0322432

FILMS SELECTED: DIVERGENT AND THE HUNGER GAMES

WORD COUNT: 937

ENGLISH 2 (ELG 30605)

WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT 1: COMPARE – CONTRAST ESSAY

LECTURER: GOPIGHANTAN MYLVAGANAM

SUBMISSION DATE: DECEMBER 4TH 2015

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes and extraterrestrial life. Divergent and The Hunger Games

do not include those typical space travel or time travel by using futuristic technology, they have their own theme and this is the reason I find these two movies are special. Divergent and The Hunger Games have several differences in the following ways: protagonist’s personalities, plot, dictator and love.

The protagonists, Katniss from The Hunger Games and Beatrice from Divergent have some differences in their personalities. Katniss likes to be in solitude and stand out in a crowd but Tris, Beatrice’s nickname after she entered the Dauntless, likes to fit in and be social. Katniss preferred not to form an alliance during the Hunger Games because she felt more comfortable when she was alone. On the other hand, Tris was always around her friends or around Tobias and bad things become closer to her when she was alone than others around her. For example, when she was attacked by the 4 Candor transfers, she was not with her friends or Four, Tobias’s nickname. The Hunger Games were all about standing out so you could get more sponsors and have a better chance to survive. Katniss scored the highest rank when she performed for the game makers and that she stood out above all other contestants. Of course at that moment, she was extremely excited. However, when Tris became the first place during the Mental Tests of the Dauntless, she said: “a wave of dread came over me.”, which means that fit in is vital important to Tris because if she stands out and people find out she is Divergent, bad things will happen to her. One of the example is she was on the verge of killing by the Dauntless leaders, but after that she was still as brave as a lion.

In The Hunger Games, there are 13 districts surrounding the Capitol, regions which fall under the control of the Capitol. All of the districts have distinct personalities, but they are all ruled by the cruel and powerful government of the Capitol. The districts will supply the goods to the Capitol. The region and amount of money of each district has plays a role in the values of each character. The people do not have the freedom of choosing their district because they are separated by birth. On the other hand, Divergent have 5 virtue-based faction, there are Amity(peaceful), Abnegation(selfless), Dauntless(brave), Candor(honest) and Erudite(intelligent). People are divided into their living spaces based on personality traits. They have the ability to choose their faction at the age of sixteen after taking the aptitude test to allow them to dictate their own future.

Although both of the movies have their own dictator, but the evil dictators are behaving in different ways in these two movies. The leader of the Capitol, President Snow is a very manipulative, cruel, and ruthless leader who does not care for the people of Panem. In The Hunger Games, the games are controlled by the sadistic President Snow. He wants to maintain his iron-tight grip on power so the Capitol remains rich and the people of districts stay under control. While in Divergent, Jeanine Matthews, Erudite’s sole representative, selected based on her IQ. She has questionable ways of going about it, her motivation for everything is to protect the faction system. She tries to find out and kill the Divergent because

she believes that the Divergent will cause the society become unsafety. She whole-heartedly believes that the faction system is the only way to maintain a peaceful and productive society. It is about the fear of a life outside of the only one she is ever known. Her desires to keep things the same makes her goes a bit insane.

For us, love is the master key that opens the gate of happiness. These two movies also have their own love story. There is a love triangle between Katniss, her protector and best friend, Gale and the emblem of hope boy-with-the-bread, Peeta in The Hunger Games. She needs to choose who is her true love between these two boy. For example, Katniss and Peeta manufacture a romantic relationship while competing in the Hunger Games in order to ingratiate themselves to those watching at home and increase their chances at survival. Quickly, the lines between their pretend feelings for each other and their real ones are blurred. Gale gets a little jealous when he is watching it all take place. Katniss does not know how she feels. Meanwhile, in Divergent, the moment when Tris and Four first look at each other they do not have the hots for anyone else, but their relationship blossom when they are constantly afraid their government is trying to hunt them down and kill them because they are Divergent. Both of these girls engage in romance in their own stories and have it rough when it comes to figuring out a good time to date between overhauling governments and leading revolutions.

From this essay, I learnt a lot of skills on how to compare two different things sufficiently and this is the first time I write the compare and contrast essay. Because of this essay, I need to watch again these two movie. While I was watching the movie, my listen skill also improved. There is also a few advancements in my English grammar and I gained a lot of new vocabulary while I was watching the movies and writing this essay.

References

1. Glenn, C. Robert, K.M. Webb, S. W. & Loretta, G. (2004) The Harbrace Writer’s Handbook, (2nd ed.) Boston: Thomson Heinle

2. Compare and Contrasting. The Writing Center. The Writing Centre at UNC Chapel Hill. Available at: http://writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/comparing-and-contrasting/ (Accessed : 26 November 2015)