Poster girl, p.29
Poster Girl,
p.29
Thank you to everyone at William Morrow: the editorial team; the design and art departments for their efforts on this beautiful package, with a shout out to Mark Robinson; the publicity, marketing, and sales departments, particularly Emily Fisher, Tavia Kowalchuk, and Deanna Bailey; and thank you to the unsung heroes in production, particularly my diligent copyeditor Ana Deboo.
Kristin Dwyer, for your enthusiasm and creativity. Elisabeth Sanders, for keeping me on track.
Everyone at New Leaf, especially Meredith Barnes, Jenniea Carter, Katherine Curtis, Veronica Grijalva, Victoria Hendersen, Hilary Pecheone, and Pouya Shahbazian, for your hard work and consistency even through challenging times.
Writers and friends Sarah Enni, Maurene Goo, Amy Lukavics, Michelle Krys, Kaitlin Ward, Kate Hart, Zan Romanoff, Jennifer Smith, Morgan Matson, Margaret Stohl, S. G. Demciri, and Laurie Devore, for keeping me steady and supported and helping me brainstorm for this book on numerous occasions. Kara Thomas, for applying her mystery wizardry to my rough draft. Courtney Summers, for encouraging me early on to be brave and do what this book really needed.
Nelson, husband, friend, early reader, road-trip chauffeur, photographer, confidante, quarantine buddy, for all of it, the whole damn thing.
Roths and Rosses, for your constant support, but also for bearing with me when I was sixteen and needed patience and understanding.
Fitches, for the same, minus the sixteen part.
All the friends who joined me on Zooms and various TV-watching chat platforms and outdoor walks in the dead of winter and frigid porch hangs over the last couple years.
Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” which helped me find Sonya’s grief whenever I lost touch with it.
Discussion Questions
The Aperture is a prison made up of four apartment blocks set in the middle of a city neighborhood, where the prisoners are constantly under observation but are also left to themselves to create and enforce any kind of social order. Why did the Triumvirate decide this was the appropriate prison for people who were once important members of the Delegation?
Seattle’s Pike Place Market is famous (or perhaps infamous) for its Gum Wall, a brick wall where for decades people have been applying their used chewing gum to create an enormous interactive art exhibit. Sonya remembers volunteering to scrape gum off that wall, which despite Delegation rules was constantly being reapplied. She thinks to herself, “People love their small rebellions” (74). Is she right? And if so, what are some small rebellions people practice in today’s society? Do they focus on certain current events or issues? Do you have any small rebellions of your own?
Several pairs of siblings appear in this story, including Charlotte and Graham, Sonya and Susanna, and Aaron and Alexander. Sonya admits that one of the reasons she agreed to model for the Delegation poster was to set herself apart from her sister. If you have siblings, how did your childhood relationship affect your self-identity? Did that change in adulthood? If you are an only child, do you think your lack of siblings affected your sense of self?
Sonya concedes that under the Delegation’s system, she did a careful cost-benefit analysis before taking an action. Are people more likely to do a good deed if other people will know about it?
The Analog Army maintains that “Elicits Are a Slippery Slope That Lead Back to the Insight” (75). In logic, a “slippery slope argument” is one that claims a specific small step will cause a chain reaction leading an enormous effect. Is the Analog Army making an effective slippery slope argument? Is there a difference between using technology that is constantly and easily available and using technology that has been integrated into the body?
Sonya says to Alexander, “I wonder how you ever knew that what your family was doing was wrong, when everything around you said it was right” (191). Are there any values your family taught you as a child that you’ve changed your mind about as an adult?
The DesCoin system was set up to reward people for desirable behavior. But how should society determine what that behavior looks like? Who gets to choose what is desirable, and how do we decide when those standards should be reevaluated?
Sonya is horrified to learn from Naomi Proctor that the algorithms behind DesCoin were customized for each individual, to shape them into the person the Delegation wanted them to become. Sonya wonders at what age the system made up its mind about a person’s future, and what led the system to sort people into their destined occupations and lifestyles. If you were evaluated by the Delegation at age ten, what role in society do you think they would have assigned to you? How different would their evaluation be if they made it today?
Alexander explained to Sonya that he loved looking at old photographs because the decisions the photographer made—the subject, how and at what angle the subject is presented, the lighting—communicate a tremendous amount of information without using words. Think about the last photo you took: what decisions did you make when you were taking it? What did that photo communicate about you and your point of view vis-à-vis the subject of the photo?
Naomi Proctor tells Sonya to “find out who you are when no one is watching” (226). Do you find that it’s more difficult to discover or be yourself now that we are so connected by social media and telecommunications?
About the Author
VERONICA ROTH is the New York Times bestselling author of Chosen Ones, the short story collection The End and Other Beginnings, the Divergent series, and the Carve the Mark duology. She was also the guest editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021. She lives in Chicago.
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Also by Veronica Roth
Chosen Ones
The End and Other Beginnings: Stories from the Future
Carve the Mark Series
Carve the Mark
The Fates Divide
Divergent Series
Divergent
Insurgent
Allegiant
Four: A Divergent Collection
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
poster girl. Copyright © 2022 by Veronica Roth. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Title page photograph © magann/stock.adobe.com
Cover design by Jaya Miceli
Torn poster photograph © Sergej57 / Getty Images
Face illustration © Tomo_kitano / Shutterstock
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2022 ISBN 978-0-358-16848-5
Print ISBN 978-0-358-16409-8
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Veronica Roth, Poster Girl
