"One Choice can transform you" "One choice can destroy you" "One choice will define you" So read the tag lines of Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy. I picked them up this weekend because I had heard good things about them, the movie for Divergent is coming out soon, and I was looking for a good book :). What I read surpassed my expectations for a young adult series. I expected easy reading, a page turning story line, and general amusement that wouldn't require a lot of thinking on my end. What I got was all of that, except the last part. See, this series starts out like a normal young adult series. There wasn't a whole lot of depth to writing, but the story itself was enjoyable, and I was able to read through it fairly quickly.
Divergent tells the story of Tris, a girl who has grown up in what used to be Chicago. Life is far different now though. Society is based on factions, groups that have been formed so that those who value certain virtues most (Truth, Peace, selflessness, knowledge, and bravery) can give their best to society through the strict application of whatever virtue, and therefore faction, they choose. They make this choice at the age of 16. The main point of the story is to describe Tris's experiences as she goes through the initiation of Dauntless (the faction that values bravery)her chosen faction. At the end of the book, Erudite (the faction that values knowledge) starts a war by controlling the minds of the dauntless and attacking Abnegation (the faction that values selflessness).
Book 2, Insurgent, continues the path of this conflict, and brings us to a shaky resolution because the group that wins the war winds up being just as tyrannical as the group that was killing everyone. However, we do find out that there is a world outside of their city, and the reason that they're all trying to kill each other is because they are afraid of what is outside the fence around their city. At this point, I figured book 3 would focus mostly on getting out of the city and dealing with the tyrant that's running it. Then I read it.
At the start Allegiant, the story moves fairly slowly. The main characters and their friends are on their way out of the city, but that happens fairly early on. From that point forward, the conflict inside the city is more of a side plot than the focus of the story. Veronica Roth takes us into another world entirely; one where people who are deemed "genetically damaged," due to an experiment centuries ago that went wrong, are being mistreated and suppressed by the "genetically pure" (sound familiar anyone?). The reason that the city exists is because the government is trying to fix the "genetic damage" it caused, and is doing so by way of certain experiments. Upon discovery of this, Tris and her friends decide to stop them, resulting in Tris's death.
Now that you have the background, I want to stop and analyze this a bit (told you it gave me more than I bargained for :P)
The story begins with Tris as the narrator. It ends with her boyfriend, Tobias (or Four as he is often called), narrating. I think the point here is to show you that even though Tris is the one who does most of the story telling, it really Four's story. With that in mind, to look at it from the beginning, you can see that Four is really the one who who has the most character development.
Tris starts out as a quiet girl from Abnegation, but quickly shows that she belongs in Dauntless. Once she begins to trust herself, her character doesn't develop a whole lot more. In Insurgent it becomes obvious that she falls apart, because she is dealing with the death of her parents, and being responsible for the death of one of her friends. Four helps to pull her out of that, but only partially. It isn't until she is facing death herself that she is able to realize that life can continue for her. No one helps her to see that but herself.
However, Tris is constantly the one helping Four throughout the story to become a better person. She helps him to face his fears, and at one point is told how much better he is with her, than without her. She challenges him, makes him better. In Allegiant, he learns that Tris is supposedly one of the genetically pure, but contrary to what he thought, he is not. This sends him into a tailspin for a while because the one good thing he thought of himself has now been taken from him. It is Tris who helps him to see otherwise, that the "damage" or "purity" of their genetics doesn't matter, he's still Four, and she still loves him.
When I read about Tris's death, initially I was outraged. How could she die from a bullet, after everything else that she had survived? But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Allegiant is written mostly from an alternating perspective, switching between Tris and Four almost every other chapter. As the story progresses, their voices blend together, and it becomes difficult to remember who is narrating this part of the story. While this might be seen as a negative thing, I think this was done on purpose. Roth wanted to show that Tris and Four were becoming one person. They thought the same, acted the same, and felt the same. Without this alternating perspective, it would have been difficult to determine this. This is one of the reasons that Tris had to die. She and Four were no longer separate entities, sharpening each other. Instead, they had begun to absorb one another. While this might not be a bad thing over all, given their characters, they needed a defining moment to give them the push to become better people. For Tris, it was in death. She was able to be not only re-united with her parents and her friends, but to do so in a way that honored her family, and ultimately, her character. For Four, Tris' death allowed him to see himself as strong, not just with her, but take what she had given him, and be strong without her. Had she not died, his character would not have fully developed.
The other reason for her death, I think, is that her character required a "somewhat" heroic ending. She was the only one who could have carried out the final mission successfully, and her death brought her a justified peace. For Tris it was better to die in the height of glory, than to live to see herself in decline. For her, life after the end of the war would have been nothing but decline. She would not have had a place in it. Just like Tolkien sends Frodo across the sea with the Elves, Roth gives Tris the most glorious exit possible. She allows her to die the hero.
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