In a dystopian Chicago of the future, society is divided into five factions: "Erudition," "Friendliness," "Sincerity," "Renunciation," and "Fearlessness." Every resident who reaches 16 years of age must take a test to determine which faction they belong to. The young Beatrice turns out to be a threat to the entire established system when the tests reveal in her a Divergent — a person who cannot be unambiguously assigned to any one faction. Divergents, capable of independent thought and not held in high regard by the government, discredit the principles on which society is built simply by existing. Now Beatrice is one of those people, living outside the law and fighting the system, which intends to eliminate them by any means.