Roth's Chicago is ruled by a government that claims to have identified the five essential components of virtuous character. The city's leaders tout the effectiveness of their segregated society, but the entire social paradigm is a mirage worthy of a Potemkin village. The term "Potemkin" refers to any social structure that hides the true conditions of a situation, and this is what Roth's futuristic Chicago encapsulates. In this city, social interaction between the members of the five factions is actively discouraged, and faction customs dictate both work and recreation choices, supplanting even individual preferences.
Meanwhile, the yearly aptitude tests are designed to identify divergents for execution, and defectors to other factions are subjected to social stigma for their choices. In the five-faction system, civilians are largely divorced from the political process. For example, civilians do not know why soldiers from the Dauntless faction must guard the Fence that surrounds the city. Meanwhile, the factionless are consigned to a dilapidated sector where many of the roads have collapsed, and open sewer systems endanger the health of its poverty-stricken populace. Accordingly, the acrostic "FACADE" is significant to the story in the sense that it alerts us to the dysfunction and malevolence of a world based on a rigid social stratification system.
Friday, July 24, 2015
An acrostic of the first letters of Factionless-Abnegation-Candor-Amity-Dauntless-Erudite spells FACADE. How is this significant to the story?
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