w/r/t the categories: actually when you start learning about the different factions and the WAYS in which they keep people in line, it's totally fascinating.

because any other time we've categorized people, it is by things that people can't choose. race, class, sex, religion, race - mostly inherent traits, right?

well what if you had a society where the social training modified behaviorisms and presumed that behavior is inherited. that people are either all selfless, all smart, all peaceful, all brave, or all ... omg I forgot the last one. So once you are in the world, you see all the ways that people monitor behavior - through shaming others and self-monitoring. Tris spends most of book one asking herself /why/ she responds to things the way that she does. She's in a system where your motivations should be pure, and she learns that it's only actions that count.

It's just so fascinating from a psychological perspective: watching this girl break from a lifetime of social programming that /still/ controls her entire world... only the more she challenges it, the more she realizes that she's not the only one and the system she had so much faith in was never all that sturdy to begin with.

It's like Foucault's wet dream of a society, honestly.

Just so, so fascinating.