I'm honestly just basing this off the first book but Caleb shows signs of being both selfless as well as being intelligent?
I tweeted Veronica Roth about it but I didn't get an answer.
I'm honestly just basing this off the first book but Caleb shows signs of being both selfless as well as being intelligent?
I tweeted Veronica Roth about it but I didn't get an answer.
According to the movies he is 63% pure. Which means he is "divergent" but not "normal" aka he is both erudite and abnegation. Which contridicta being erudite. Erudites, while being intelligent, lose a sense of compassion and become more selfish. Being abnegation means you are selfless, to the point of giving little care what happens to yourself. So he is both intelligent and compassionate. Which means he will forever feel a duty to others while craving knowledge. He ultimately chooses erudite because he think that knowledge, science, and information could help him help other people. In abnegation he never felt like he could gain the knowledge he yearned for. So he is not like Beatrice, who is 100% pure. In the books Tris/Six is 3/5 of the factions. She is like Caleb, smart but compassionate, however she is also nearly fearless... Being abnegation is a lot like being Dauntless, because you can go really far to help, and that's not a big jump from help to protect. Unlike Caleb she doesnt feel the need to gain more knowledge... And she isn't sure helping people the abnegation way is the best way. Dauntless made sense to Tris because it's a way to be selfless. What Caleb and Tris never knew was that most Abnegation are divergent and they go out of their way to conceal and protect them. It wasn't their parents forcing them to choose Abnegation out of faction over blood, but actually to protect them from the faction system. In the books Tris is not kind or truthful because normal people are not truthful and you don't need to be kind to be compassionate. In the movies they allide to this but it's better understood that she is all 5 factions to better explain her 100% pure status. But being kind of a form of compassion, and so being amity is similar to being Abnegation, except it requires you to be forgiving, which the leader of Amity tells Tris when they are refugees there in Amity. Tris can forgive others but it is nearly impossible for her to forgive herself. Normal people are liars. But being truthful is a form of bravery and a form of compassion. Tris can't forgive herself until she is truthful. Which allows her to understand kindness. And therefore pass the Sim. Being completely truthful and completely kind are not normal human traits, but they are learned traits, and therefore being normal means being able to do these things. In the movies its hard to convey these things and so making her aptitude for all 5 explains away her normal status.
I'm not a fan of the way the percentage was explained in movies, it goes against cannon too. In the books it's said you're only Divergent if your genes are 100% pure, which actually makes sense to me as 100% (insert adjective) basically means (insert the same adjective) with a few extra steps (lol), if it isn't completely (adj) then it isn't (adj); you could say partly, but it still doesn't qualify it as (adj).
My point is, there is no partly Divergent, genes mustn't be damaged for it to be true, and partly damaged is still damaged. That's what the books say, and the movies' explanation doesn't fit into it. There are people closer to being Divergent, but they aren't as long as their genes aren't completely pure. So I think you can be close to a faction's traits but not really have the aptitude (by the same logic, I'd disagree normal people are liars, I wouldn't call someone a liar if they're mostly honest and rarely lie, there's a bunch of people like that, including me). Caleb does have Abnegation traits, but they're evidently the result of his upbringing. He even has quite a bit in common with Amity, fear of dangerous situations, dislike for fights, will to lie to avoid disagreement, gulliblity. It'd be fun to guess his possible aptitudes, but canon already denies his Divergence so that is out. If it weren't, I'd even say his other aptitude, besdies Erudite, is Amity and not Abnegation.
Also, about Tris' aptitude, again, movies are diffrent from canon there. I'd rather we didn't accept their version, it'd be too much and make the character what they tend to call 'Mary Sue'. Again, having some traits of a faction doesn't mean you have a full aptitude, understanding virutes doesn't mean having them (if you only understand what you have too, it's not much of an understanding). Kindness and honesty aren't Tris' typical traits, they aren't something she values highly either. That's ok for a human. I understand it's hard to represent in movies, but they did make many changes of important thigns and did a bit sloppy job.