WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Allegiant.
There has been a lot of uproar over the events at the end of Allegiant. I will confess that I expected someone important to die. Divergent has not been a very happy series, after all (though it has nothing on Game of Thrones, a series I’m still too traumatised to complete). It’s no huge leap to expect a Huge Sacrificial Moment to bring the series to an end. For several pages, Roth convinced me that this task would fall to Caleb in his drive towards Redemption. She nudged me toward the switch though, in all of Tris’ musings about letting people sacrifice themselves for you.
Still, it was only when Tris pulled out that gun on Caleb that I thought, “Of course.”
Of course she wouldn’t let the brother she still loves, despite all his mistakes, to kill himself just to gain her forgiveness. She may be Divergent, but she was raised Abnegation and chose Dauntless. She’s been raised to look out for the concerns and feelings of others, and trained to defend both them and herself. Most importantly, Caleb is her brother. No matter what he’s done, despite the mistakes he may have made, he is her brother. And she will not send someone she loves on a suicide mission that she can likely survive.
If Tris had let Caleb complete that mission, something inside her may have broken.
This is, I think, part of what makes being a writer so hard. It’s not often that they can just do what readers demand. Writers must have a greater loyalty to the people they’ve created (and, by doing so, ultimately to their readers).
Of course Tris would be the one to walk into that room- her character would never allow for anything else, especially since she had a chance of surviving the serum.
Of course David would keep an eye on her and be suspicious of the time she spends with the Damaged- he’s planning to erase almost everyone she’s ever known.
The two of them were always going to end up facing off in that tiny room. And while Tris may not have been prepared for him, especially because of his handicap, he was going to be prepared for her.
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