Well, just to be clear, Tris’s story is not “Christian” any more or less than other stories that feel somehow true to people– I am committed to a particular faith, yes, but my intention is always just to tell the most honest story I can (even when those stories are obviously not “factual”!). Or is the faction system a perversion of his admonition to Christians to function as parts of a body? Are the Divergent the only ones capable of working together as the true body of Christ? (Sorry, that’s several questions, but it’s a complex issue for me.)

How do you see the story of Tris as being one about our faith and the dangers the apostle Paul pointed out in I Corinthians 12? Each of the factions celebrates a characteristic (courage, meekness, wisdom, peace, truth) that is, somewhere in Scripture, seen as one Christians should seek to attain, and yet, as we see, the results are disastrous. Why are half of my mother’s friends named “Barbara,” but there were a dozen “Katherine”s in my graduating class? Certain names are popular in certain groups and not in others and I’d be hard pressed to explain why, though I’m sure someone else has.Ĩ. I also think the way we use names in groups over time is somewhat arbitrary, and has less to do with the meanings of the names than you’d think.

Joshua doesn’t feel stuffy to me, it feels tough, strong-maybe a Dauntless or Candor name? I’ve actually gotten asked this a lot, and it was really just an instinct I had– I choose names mostly based on how they feel to me, and Abnegation names tend to feel stuffy or old-fashioned (Beatrice, Tobias, Susan, Marcus). Why isn’t Joshua an Abnegation name, as Marcus points this out when Christina uses it in her babbling cover story to the guards at the gate in Insurgent? Today, Hogwarts Prof Elizabeth Baird-Hardy (pictured at right) asks Ms Roth about names, the Christian content of the series, and, yes, tattoos! Enjoy the generous and thoughtful responses!ħ.

Part 1 of our 10 Questions Interview with Veronica Roth, author of the Divergent Trilogy, the part featuring the questions of Prof Louise Freeman, can be found here.

Divergent series roth