The Great Allegiant Debate

Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy has been wildly popular lately. A few months ago I was able to read all three of the books, and each one brought its own thoughts to mind. I thought the first one was extremely good, so I kept going with the second book. I was a little disappointed by Insurgent, but nonetheless I took the plunge and read Allegiant.

There has been a massive debate in Allegiant over one of the character deaths.


WARNING: Spoilers ahoy!


Here's my take on the whole ordeal with Tris dying in the final book. I can see where some people are coming from. some of my friends see it as her keeping her promise to her brother never to send him to his death like he attempted to do to her. She was staying faithful to the only family she had left and she didn't want to break that promise.

On the other hand, you have my take on it. I don't think she should have died. When I was reading it, I was expecting a sort of Gandalf moment where she wasn't actually dead and she'd show up later in the Epilogue or something along those lines. When she actually died, I was shocked. I probably could have seen the signs earlier if I had been looking for them. Four narrating his own chapter, Tris having second thoughts about her brother going in. But I wasn't looking for that.

When Veronica Roth killed off Tris, my first reaction was shock. Then anger and a little disgust settled in. It didn't feel like she did it to be clever and pull a major last-second plot twist; it felt more lazy to me, like she just figured there was nothing left for Tris to do so she had to get her out of the way somehow. Even now I don't see Tris's death as a brilliant feat by the author, I find it a little irritating. Killing off your main character is the most risky thing you can do. The readers love them and with a first-person narrative, it's even more risky.

For me, the risk just didn't pay off. It could just be that after the first book I started falling out of love with the series, because the characters starting acting more like each other and losing a little bit of the characteristics that I'd grown to love. Either way, my take on this great Allegiant debate is that I was not really impressed with Veronica's plot twist with Tris at the end, and I just wish she had done it differently.

That is all.

Cheers,
Sea

PS: Hopefully the vlog will be up and running sometime this week! No promises, but I'll have more time to film and edit this week than I did last week. Cross your fingers!