Divergent Thinking (8 page)

Since Tris jumps off a train onto the roof of Dauntless headquarters, having placed the train routes should make it easier to now locate Dauntless. “The building I'm on forms one side of a square with three other buildings,” Tris tells us in
Divergent.
“In the center . . . is a huge hole in the concrete.” The Dauntless headquarters are also at least thirty minutes from the Hub, “far from the heart of the city,” on the same train line as the Abnegation school trains, and possess a cavern big enough to be the Pit, as well as tunnels and an overhanging platform. That's a lot of specificity for a building that doesn't seem to match any in modern Chicago!

A popular fan theory is that the Dauntless sequester themselves in Thompson Center, a governmental building for the state of Illinois. It is round and tall, easily accessible by Chicago's el trains, and encompasses enough land to make up a square city block. But the Thompson is not directly under the el—a jump like the Dauntless are fond of would be nearly impossible—and it is in The Loop, the base of Chicago's bustling downtown, located within minutes, even when walking, of the Hub. While the Thompson shares some characteristics with Dauntless' HQ, I wasn't satisfied with the idea of Tris, Tobias, and Tori living there.

The majority of buildings that the el trains would overhang closely enough to make the roof jump possible are in The Loop, the downtown area of the city where the biggest skyscrapers—like the Willis (Sears) Tower and Candor's Daley Cultural Center, among others—reign. Of course, none of these massive architectural feats could be the Dauntless headquarters itself, since jumping onto their roofs would take an airplane, not a train! Also, while “train tracks loop around the Dauntless compound,” it is far from “the heart of the city” (
Divergent
). Tris tells us it takes thirty minutes (or more) to get to the Dauntless headquarters from the Hub by elevated train and that the tracks are seven stories high, at least, where the Dauntless make their rooftop jump. So that would take any buildings in, or near, The Loop out of the running.

Other places where trains loop around any buildings of significance are few and far between. There are some warehouses in the Lincoln Park area of the city; a few restaurants in the Gold Coast. Nowhere really seemed to match Tris' descriptions of the sprawling compound complete with a Pit and room for many shops and venues, like Tori's tattoo parlor.

One of the places that came to mind as a potential location is Chicago's historic shopping attraction, Water Tower Place. The octagonal free fall of the corridors and staircases called to mind the drop that Tris recounts making as she flies through the hole in the roof, and, of course, there would be plenty of room to live, work, play, and train all in one massive compound.

Water Tower Place's shopping center, named for (and located beside) the only surviving landmark of the Great Chicago Fire.

While there is no water in this “Water Tower Place” anymore—the water tower itself is across the street, and even that's become an art gallery—it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine its insides gutted and retrofitted to include more natural rock formations and the treacherous Dauntless waterfall where Al met his end. Also, it is located far from the “heart of the city,” although a walk from Dauntless to Erudite or Navy Pier along the Magnificent Mile would be a snap for the well-trained Dauntless warriors.

However, there are no train tracks that overhang its roof. The closest stops let off four blocks away, and that's too large a leap for anyone, even someone with only six fears in the world.

Water Tower Place was out. Maybe placing Abnegation, since the Dauntless pass their row houses by train to get home from the Choosing Ceremony in
Divergent
, would help settle the location; they should be on the same line of Chicago's complicated, multispoked el.

The location of Abnegation is fairly concrete, although not as much as Candor's: When the Dauntless under simulation are sent to attack Abnegation's leaders, Tris recounts the mob's presence at the corner of North and Fairfield. That would put Abnegation in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of the city, historic home of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago Our Lady of the Angels Catholic School, which burned in a tragic fire. Given the beliefs and dogma of Abnegation, as well as their adherence to rules similar to the Catholic vow of poverty and charity, the neighborhood seems like an appropriate one for Abnegation's home.

Like the members of Abnegation, the residents of today's Humboldt Park put a lot of time and energy into improving the city: in 1995, concerned citizens created the action group The United Blocks of West Humboldt Park (TUBOWHP), which aims to “enhance the livability of the area by establishing and maintaining an open line of communication and liaison between the neighborhood, government agencies and other neighborhoods” and “provide an open process by which all members of the neighborhood may involve themselves in the affairs of the neighborhood.”
⁵

The comparisons are not all positive ones. Sadly, like Abnegation's decimation by Jeanine's simulation, the area has long been a victim of the city's epidemic of violence. The Division Street Riots gripped the neighborhood in 1966, and in the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, various street gangs—the Young Lords, the Latin Kings, the Spanish Cobras, the Latin Disciples—grappled for domination of the area. Eventually, the Young Lords, who originated in the Humboldt Park area—and wore Abnegation gray—teamed up with the neighborhood's government and community organizers to aid in the repairs of the neighborhood. They also took a stand for better protections for Puerto Rican citizens in Chicago, which may be alluded to through the Abnegation's work with the factionless in
Divergent
.
⁶

Putting Abnegation's faction headquarters at the intersection of North and Fairfield sets it right at the City Colleges of Chicago's Humboldt Park Vocational Education Center of Wright College, an adult outreach school specializing in nursing—an appropriate place for Abnegation, who focus so much on helping others. There are also Catholic churches in the vicinity from where the faction could be led. The Vocational Education Center is accessible by the el's Blue Line train, so Tris, Caleb, and, once upon a time, Tobias could have taken this route from Humboldt Park to the big multifaction school in The Loop.

However, we can't use the Blue Line to guess at Dauntless' headquarters location. We know that the Dauntless ride a different path to school than the Abnegation since Tris, when she was Beatrice, would wait and watch them disembark from their own train every day at school: “I pause by a window in the E Wing and wait for the Dauntless to arrive. I do this every morning. At exactly 7:25, the Dauntless prove their bravery by jumping from a moving train” (
Divergent
). While Tris passes the Abnegation neighborhood on her way to Dauntless HQ after the Choosing Ceremony, the two trains are certainly on different lines—different paths—and intersect primarily at the school.

The school in the series is primarily noted for its “large metal sculpture” (
Divergent
). There is no shortage of these in Chicago; in The Loop alone, there are roughly twenty! The largest and most recognizable are the “The Picasso” and Calder's “Flamingo,” both of which are large, metal, and sit in front of buildings. Schools that have statues are a part of Chicago's landscape as well, such as the the University of Chicago campus, but its main statue is stone—and it sits well outside The Loop area where Tris' school is suggested to be.

The most likely place for Tris' school is the Harold Washington Library Center, set in The Loop and flanked by massive copper gargoyles, within spitting distance of the large red metal Flamingo.

The Flamingo, a familiar Chicago landmark that practically begs for some Dauntless climbing.

The Harold Washington Library. Its cornices also include statues of owls, which are symbols of knowledge
—
ideal for a school!

Even with Abnegation, Candor, and Erudite placed—and of course knowing the locations of landmarks that Tris' Chicago shares with our own, such as Navy Pier—I wasn't sure where Dauntless was meant to be. The University of Chicago campus still seemed workable, but just too far south. Maybe mapping out the farthest borders of Tris' city would help: time to turn to Amity.

I don't envy the Amity's commute to school every day! Tris mentions in
Allegiant
that on the path from Amity's compound to the outside, Tris' group of Allegiant walk along Route 90. In Chicago en route to O'Hare Airport, this would mean I-90—locally called the Kennedy Expressway—a highway that, in modern times, is so prone to congestion that it strikes terror in the hearts of commuters. Traffic updates are broadcast on local radio stations and to websites every eight minutes or less, and, despite being a high-speed expressway, speeds average twenty miles per hour or less. (One can only assume that congestion would improve after the population thinned in the “Purity War,” though, so maybe the Amity are luckier than Chicagoans today.) The same Blue Line that would bring Abnegation to the school does follow along the line of the Kennedy Expressway, and is likely the same train that would bring the Amity students to the school and its workers to the Hub when needed.