Can I just leave it at the title of this post?
Allegiant Chapter 49: Tris
The death serum smells like smoke and spice.
What kind of death serum even is this, it sounds like a burnt curry serum. Did a chef design it? Also, I love how ‘spice’ is just the most generic thing I’ve ever read. It could literally smell like any fucking spice, right?
Tris is about to die, but she thinks about everyone she has to live for, and fights against the death serum like she’s fought against no serum before. She survives and makes her way into the weapons room only to find David waiting for her there.
Allegiant Chapter 50: TRIS’ LAST CHAPTER
Tris enlightens us about the capabilities of people in wheelchairs:
“How did you inoculate yourself against the death serum?” he asks me. He’s still sitting in his wheelchair, but you don’t need to be able to walk to fire a gun.
Thank you for that, Tris. I’ll always remember you as the person that informed me that even if you can’t walk, you can still fire a gun with your hands.
David says Tris had to have inoculated herself against the death serum, and he’s the only one who has access to that. Tris is like, “Haven’t you been reading this series like every other person who wanted to fill the void The Hunger Games left? I can resist all serums. It’s my one thing.”
David tells Tris that he figured out something was going on because “[she’s] been running around with genetically damaged people all week.” Um, she’s been with these people since she fucking arrived, dude. He also says Cara was caught trying to manipulate the lights but knocked herself out before she could reveal anything.
Being a practical person, David for some reason inoculated himself against the death serum and waiting inside the weapons room with a…spare gun? Why not just send loads of guards OUTSIDE the room? Like why bother inoculating yourself against the death serum especially if you thought it was impossible for anyone else to survive it?
David finishes his contractually obligated villain speech by saying he has to kill Tris. Bet she’s feeling sad about the time she saved his life, huh?
Tris also realizes that David doesn’t quite understand what Tris wants to do.
He thinks I’m here to steal the weapons that will reset the experiments, not deploy one of them. Of course he does.
I understand David’s perceived motivation about as much as I understand Tris’ real motive.
Tris takes the time to accuse David of being the reason her mother died…and also accuse him of being in love with her mother.
“Did you love her?” I say. “All those years she was sending you correspondence . . . the reason you never wanted her to stay there . . . the reason you told her you couldn’t read her updates anymore, after she married my father . . .”
David sits still, like a statue, like a man of stone.
“I did,” he says. “But that time is past.”
That must be why he welcomed me into his circle of trust, why he gave me so many opportunities. Because I am a piece of her, wearing her hair and speaking with her voice. Because he has spent his life grasping at her and coming up with nothing.
I can’t wait till you die and stop explaining every god damn thing to me.
Also, can we just talk about how THIS ADDS NOTHING TO THE STORY. It’s just an excuse for Tris to start her contractually obligated hero’s speech:
“My mother wasn’t a fool,” I say. “She just understood something you didn’t. That it’s not sacrifice if it’s someone else’s life you’re giving away, it’s just evil.”
I back up another step and say, “She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love, not misplaced disgust for another person’s genetics. That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don’t have enough of their own. That’s why I need to stop you from ‘sacrificing’ all those people and their memories. Why I need to rid the world of you once and for all.”
Tris lunges towards the device with the memory serum. Somehow, even though he is in a wheelchair, David starts shooting Tris. Holy shit, I almost forgot he could do that! Anyway, Tris manages to punch the code in and unleash the serum…and then her mother steps out from behind David. I guess we’re meant to think for a second her mother has been alive this whole time, but the truth quickly comes out:
“Am I done yet?” I say, and I’m not sure if I actually say it or if I just think it and she hears it.
“Yes,” she says, her eyes bright with tears. “My dear child, you’ve done so well.”
“What about the others?” I choke on a sob as the image of Tobias comes into my mind, of how dark and how still his eyes were, how strong and warm his hand was, when we first stood face-to-face. “Tobias, Caleb, my friends?”
“They’ll care for each other,” she says. “That’s what people do.”
Tris hugs her mom, and, uh, I guess they go to heaven together? Farewell, Tris, you died as you lived, fucking around with serums.
How do you all feel about Tris’ death? I’m personally so checked out of these books that I’m just happy to have ticked off two more chapters.
Imagine being actually invested in this series though and this is how their protagonist’s arc end. Poor readers.
Also I can’t believe Tris died for that piece of shit Caleb.
That was so, so pointless. It was done badly both narratively and from a character arc perspective.
I thought Tris dying would have to do with the death wish that we’ve had pushed on us through all of…book 2? (Remember that?) But no, it’s “I may or may not be able to survive this – WHOOPS GUESS NOT HI MOM!!!”
Which actually covers why it was badly done from both perspectives.
YES it was like “She had a death wish and she overcame it, so she died for the right reasons instead of the wrong ones. Yay?”
I’m actually working a series right now, and the protagonist at one point suffers from major depression and suicidal thoughts. I flirted with the idea of her dying at the end (not from suicide but for more “heroic” reasons) for about half a second before I realized, “What? No! That’s an insanely fucked up fate for a character that was finally overcoming a desire to kill herself!”
Maybe it’s just me, but I just see a lot of unfortunate implications with that: “See, she’s finally achieved her goal! DEATH! BLAHEEUDH!”
That was exactly my point! You don’t give a character who has spent so much time grappling with suicide what they want. That feels really… awful. Especially at the end of a series.
More than that, it’s bad drama. If your first person narrator character is going into a situation with a 50% chance of survival, then they should survive. Heroes in adventure stories die in sacrifices, the only exceptions being when you are EXPLICITLY making the point that sometimes good people just die and shit happens. But “Divergent” was not that type of book, and even if it was this was not that type of death either.
If Tris were really to sacrifice herself, it would have to be a SACRIFICE. She would have to go into it knowing she WOULD die and doing it anyway. This fifty-fifty shit is narrative weak sauce; it cheapens Tris’ sacrifice, because we don’t know for sure if she would have gone through with it if she KNEW she would die. She PROBABLY would have…but we don’t know that.
That, by the way, is one thing Deathly Hallows DID get right (criticisms aside, it was a very good book). Harry’s sacrifice was a real sacrifice. He went into it thinking, even if the reader didn’t, his death was certain, and the scene was extremely moving as a result. If Harry went into it thinking he had a chance at surviving the scene would have been far less moving because it wouldn’t have answered the big question: When push finally comes to shove, would Harry sacrifice himself for his friends?
With Tris, that question was never answered; not really. And that’s bullshit.
It’s also part of what made “Lord of the Rings” so brilliant, by the way. The big question of the series was not whether or not Frodo and Sam would sacrifice their lives to destroy the Ring; we pretty much knew they would do it since the Council of Elrond, and it was never a serious question. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” was never really a theme in that series.
No, the big question was, “If Frodo finally had the same choice Isildur had to destroy the Ring, would he do it?” And the answer was no! The hero totally, utterly, and unambiguously failed.
LotR was much more radical than it’s given credit for.
I’d be lying if I said this was devastating. I am somewhat surprised though. I mean, she is the main character in a novel written in 1st person POV. You don’t expect that. But, it’s fine, as we’ll just get Fourbias narrating the rest.
All in all, this was not a gasp worthy death.
Jesus, you just made me realize that this is literally the worst part of this whole thing. WE ARE STUCK WITH TOBIAS AS THE ONLY NARRATOR NOW.
LOL! He really is a terrible narrator, even by this series’ standard.
Every reader to Veronica Roth…
https://d.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1380222758ra/542006.gif
no, honestly, I don’t know why (perhaps because I had 3 essays due and I thought I was going to fail my MA, and I was spending my time reading this ridic series instead of doing my actual work?) but I actually CRIED ON A TRAIN when she died. Totally surprised me, at least something finally happened.
That is completely legit, though. When I have been going through rough periods, I’ve cried during cat food commercials, and I’ve never even owned a cat in my life. It’s also a different experience when you’ve just turned your back on a series completely and are force-feeding yourself two chapters a week. When I binge-read something and fully experience it all at once I’m more prone to getting emotional over scenes like this. However, I don’t think that would have happened with Allegiant because I got sick of all this back in book 2.
I read this book when I was pregnant, and sobbed when Tris died, because pregnant women are deranged.
I’m a little disappointed by your reaction though. I thought you might be pleased, like if Abby had died in the fire or Ana had been strangled by her subconscious.
I don’t know, the thing is, I wasn’t happy about it. I wasn’t devastated because at this point, I didn’t feel any connection to Tris or the story, but I never actively hated her. Compared to most of the other characters we read about, she was alright.
I’m trying to think which character I’d be happiest if they died…and the thing is I don’t think any of them would make me happy individually. It’s more like collectively I wish everyone in Fifty Shades would die in an alien invasion or something.
I couldn’t even remember who David was until Tris said something about her mother. Then it sounded like a scene from Harry Potter, with Snape and his secret love of Harry’s mother. I felt nothing at Tris’ death. ” Farewell, Tris, you died as you lived, fucking around with serums.” Perfect !!!
I couldn’t even remember who David was until Tris said something about her mother. Then it sounded like a scene from Harry Potter, with Snape and his secret love of Harry’s mother. I felt nothing at Tris’ death. ” Farewell, Tris, you died as you lived, fucking around with serums.” Perfect !!!
I left your awkward Judynape comment because it makes me laugh. I thought the exact same thing about Harry Potter! Except Snape helped Harry whereas David’s love for Tris’ mom resulted in…nothing. He killed her anyway.
The thing that gets me the most out of these books, both Hunger Games and Divergent. They star fairly strong female protagonists who go through traumatic episodes and in both cases the girls come out really worse for it. In one case, Katniss is completely comotose and broken and needs the help of a psychotic ex who may or may not eventually choke her to death in her sleep to recover.
In Tris’ case, she’s suicidal and then eventually justifies her own suicidal impulse to herself so that she can off herself while doing something heroic-ish.
I… I would just like for once that a woman who survives trauma to… iunno- actually survive it… maybe?