Allegiant (novel)

Theme

The story background discusses how a future, ruined Chicago becomes a society that defines its citizens by strict conformity to their social and personality-related affiliations with five different factions. This removes the threat of anyone exercising independent will and re-threatening the population's safety through war or another human-created catastrophe. The factions are Abnegation to uphold selflessness, Amity to uphold peacefulness, Candor to uphold honesty, Dauntless to uphold bravery, and Erudite, to uphold knowledge. Tris tests out for equal aptitude with three different factions: Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless. This classifies her as "Divergent" and capable of independent thought beyond the restrictive nature of the factions. She is warned never to share this information with anyone for fear of her life. Divergent are a threat to the stable society, hunted and killed by the ruthless leader of Erudite, Jeanine, in order to eliminate the "threat" of independent thinking. Those who fail the initiation of their particular faction are deemed factionless, who are treated as a lower class and a drain on society.

Plot

Following the revelation of the truth about their city, Evelyn Johnson-Eaton becomes the leader of the city and forces all faction members to live equally with the factionless. Through confessing her role in the previous insurgency, Beatrice "Tris" Prior, Christina, and Cara are pardoned. Tris is informed by Tobias "Four" Eaton that the faction members have formed the "Allegiant", a rebel group wanting to restore the faction system. During a commotion between the factionless and the faction members, several people are killed, including Evelyn's right-hand man, Edward. Tris is invited into a meeting with the Allegiant, whose leaders, Cara and Johanna Reyes, have formulated a plan to usurp Evelyn as well as sending envoys outside the city. Tris is selected for the expedition, alongside Tobias, Cara, Christina, Peter Hayes, Uriah Pedrad, and Tori Wu. Tris asks Tobias to free her brother, Caleb, upon hearing about his planned execution. During the journey, Tori is killed by the factionless, while the others manage to escape and meet with Zoe and Tobias' mentor, Amar, long thought to be dead. The two take them to the Bureau of Genetic Welfare and meet with its leader, David.

David explains that their city—Chicago—is walled off from the outside world as part of an experiment sanctioned by the US Government to produce more genetically pure (GP), or "Divergents", from the genetically-damaged (GD), which are the result of a failed experiment to correct human genes that led to the "Purity War". David gives Tris her mother, Natalie's journal detailing her life before entering Chicago: she was a refugee from Milwaukee who joined the Bureau and later became a volunteer in order to stop the killings of the Divergents at the hands of Erudite and escort them safely; those rescued include Amar and Tori's brother, George. Meanwhile, Tobias is disheartened when he learns that he is not in fact a true Divergent. Sympathetic to Tobias, GD Bureau staff, Nita, persuades him to join with her and the other GDs living in the fringes to join a rebellion against the GP staff. Tris is skeptical, albeit influenced by a jealousy of Nita, when Tobias tells her the plan. From a sympathetic GP staff informant, Matthew, Nita attempts to enter the Weapon Room, which involves setting a bomb that renders Uriah brain-damaged. Tris stops Nita's rampage by holding David hostage before wounding her, allowing her to be arrested.

Tris is elevated to the position of council member, although Nita's information has made her realize that the Bureau is the one that supplied Erudite with the simulation serums that controlled Dauntless to invade Abnegation. Through the security cameras, it is revealed that Marcus Eaton, having been banished by Evelyn, is teaming up with Johanna to steal the factionless' weapons, which will be countered by Evelyn releasing the death serum on everyone. Tris learns that David intends to release memory serums capable of erasing memories to the Chicago population to save his experiment. To counteract this, she formulates a plan to release the memory serum towards the Bureau members while Tobias, Christina, and Peter, with Amar and George's help, head back to Chicago to give antiserums to Christina and Uriah's families. Tobias diverts halfway while carrying a memory serum, intending to inject it to his mother. However, when he instead offers her to avert the war in exchange for becoming his mother again, Evelyn agrees and goes outside to negotiate a peace settlement with Johanna and Marcus, requiring her to go into self-exile for two years while Marcus has to vow never to attempt to lead Chicago. Tobias instead gives the memory serum to Peter, who intends to start anew and stop being mean.

Back at the Bureau, Caleb volunteers to expose the memory serum, a certain suicidal mission due to the death serum planted there. However, Tris replaces him at the last second. Though she is successful in repelling the death serum, David has been waiting for her inside and proceeds to shoot her as she works to expose the memory serum. As she lays dying, Tris sees visions of her mother embracing her before succumbing to her wounds and dies. Tobias, Christina, and Peter head back to the Bureau, only to hear from Cara about Tris' death in an attempt to expose the serum. Tobias goes into a deep depression and is about to drink the memory serum to erase his memories with Tris, until Christina stops him. In the meantime, Uriah's family: his brother, Ezekiel "Zeke", and his mother, Hana, are called in to be with Uriah before his life support is unplugged.

Two and a half years later, Chicago is opening and rebuilding itself, with people moving in and out, regardless of their gene purity. Tobias, having been working as an assistant council member under Johanna, welcomes Evelyn back from her self-exile. To celebrate Choosing Day, he, Christina, Caleb, Zeke, Shauna, Cara, and Matthew decide to ride a zipline from the Hancock Building, where Tobias scatters Tris' ashes, having come to accept her sacrifice and death.

Development

On July 18, at the San Diego Comic-Con panel for the film Divergent, Roth revealed that Allegiant is from both Tris and Four’s point of view. Talking about this, she said that "I tried repeatedly to write Allegiant in just Tris’s voice, but it didn’t work; her perspective, her way of seeing things, was a little too limited for the story I needed to tell, I wanted to do two things with it: A. let two characters experience different things, and B. let them react differently to the same things, so that I (and eventually, the reader) would get a better sense of the whole story, the whole picture.”

She further said that "I’ve said before that I’ve always seen Four (increasingly, as the series goes on) as a plot-mover alongside Tris, so he was the obvious choice for the second POV (though not the only one I tried). Exploring him and his choices and his assumptions about the world was incredibly interesting to me."

Title

Veronica Roth said that she didn't try to choose titles ending with "-ent" for all three books. Furthermore, she said that "I did not go through other ideas. It was always Allegiant, which she defined as "One who is loyal or faithful to a particular cause or person."

The World of Divergent: The Path to Allegiant

The World of Divergent: The Path to Allegiant is a promotional electronic book by Veronica Roth, released free of charge by HarperCollins on September 24, 2013. Published four weeks before Allegiant was released, it was intended to be a companion book to the Divergent trilogy. Roth continues to write related fiction and The Path to Allegiant is a companion book to the entire so-called Divergent Universe in many respects. The book contains exclusive detailed description of Factions and its origin, the inspirations for the trilogy, quiz on "Factions" and answers by Roth regarding the trilogy. The book also contained ten teasers from Allegiant.

Critical reception

In a review for Entertainment Weekly, Hillary Busis gave the novel B+ and wrote that "If you've already been sucked into Roth's world, you'll appreciate the book's twisty plot — which provides needed context for the series' prefabricated society — and its chastely torrid Tris/Tobias love scenes." Publishers Weekly said in its review that "The alternating perspectives are bothersome at times, due to the similarity between Tris and Tobias’s first-person narratives. However, for those who have faithfully followed these five factions, and especially the Dauntless duo who stole hearts two books ago, this final installment will capture and hold attention until the divisive final battle has been waged."

Film adaptations

On December 16, 2013, Summit Entertainment announced that the film adaptation of Allegiant would be released on March 18, 2016. On April 11, 2014, Lionsgate announced that the film adaptation would be split into two films titled The Divergent Series: Allegiant and The Divergent Series: Ascendant, Ascendant has a release date of June 9, 2017. On July 9, 2014, Lionsgate recruited Noah Oppenheim to write the screenplay for Part 1. Shailene Woodley, Theo James, and Naomi Watts will reprise their roles. On December 5, 2014, it was announced that Robert Schwentke, who directed The Divergent Series: Insurgent, would return to direct Allegiant. Principal photography for The Divergent Series: Allegiant began in Atlanta on May 18, 2015. Lee Toland Krieger will replace Schwentke as the director of Ascendant.