Veronica Roth. Allegiant. New York: HarperCollins, 2013. Print.

OK, before going any further, I want to say that I liked the ending. I thought Allegiant was a satisfying last book in a trilogy. There, I have said it. The climax was not completely unexpected, and I believe it took the author some courage to end Allegiant the way she did.

The story ends with the observation, “There are many ways to be brave in this world.” (509) Ms. Roth was brave coming up with the story that she did. I give her a lot of credit for that.

Allegiant is the third and final volume in the Divergent trilogy. I reviewed the first two books earlier at https://langblog.englishplus.com/?p=1523. Book three takes Tris and boyfriend Tobias (a.k.a. Four) to the fringes, to the world outside urban Chicago where they have lived all their lives. There they discover that Chicago is still part of the loosely federated United States, but that most of the country was laid waste in the Purity Wars. Those were civil wars between people considered genetically pure (GP) those considered genetically deficient (GP).

Many of the urban areas that remained (we discover that Peoria and a few cities in Wisconsin still exist) were involved in some kind of genetic experimenting. That is why most Chicagoans in the first two books are totally ignorant of anything outside of their inner city. At least seven generations before our stories take place, mankind had developed serums to supposedly take care of genetic defects in people—and not just physical defects, but also behavioral ones.

The problem was that the genetic engineering had unforeseen side effects. Perhaps some bad behavior was bred out, but that made people unbalanced—more passive, less compassionate, depending on what was “corrected.” The novel explains that the genetic engineering led the government that was left in Chicago to experiment with the factions. But we learn that the people who typified each faction were GDs who were missing something:

And he’s right to say that every faction loses something when it gains a virtue: the Dauntless, brave but cruel; the Erudite, intelligent but vain; the Amity, peaceful but passive; the Candor, honest but inconsiderate; the Abnegation, selfless but stifling. (123)

Tris discovers that most of the people outside where she ends up are GP, and that, in fact, the Divergents are actually people whose DNA has not been altered. She discovers, for example, that in the rest of the world having both desire for adventure and compassion for others is perfectly normal, and even beneficial.

As it turns out, the attempt has not resulted in corrected genes, but in damaged ones…Take away someone’s fear, or low intelligence, or dishonesty…and you take away their compassion. Take away someone’s aggression and you take away their motivation, or their ability to assert themselves. Take away their selfishness and you take away their sense of self-preservation.” (122, 123, second ellipsis in the original)

Like the first two books, most of this novel is full of action. Once again there is a new conflict in almost every chapter. But there is an underlying theme, no unlike the Star Trek:Voyager episodes about the Borg or the Klingons: What is it that makes us human? Tris concludes that people are pretty remarkable and complex, even the GDs, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. (Psalm 139:14)

What makes people special has been a recurring theme in Western literature in the last two centuries since elites have challenged the traditional Judeo-Christian worldview that man was made in God’s image but also inherits sin from Adam. This is a theme of Frankenstein; the monster has all the right body parts and biochemistry, but is he human? And, of course, that is a theme of Brave New World. Are the manufactured and motherless test tube children under Mustafa Mond really human?

Allegiant continues with the parallels to Brave New World mentioned in the review of the first two Divergent books. In some ways it is as if Brave New World were updated to include what we have learned about DNA and genetics in the last eighty years. Because of that, Allegiant has even more of a science-fiction flavor to it than the first two did. Tris’s Chicago proves to be not only a political dystopia but a scientific dystopia as well: again, more like Brave New World than, say, 1984 or The Journal of David Q. Little.

At one point Allegiant began to remind me of another multi-volume book set, the Left Behind stories. Those are largely set in the Chicago area after a world war has laid waste to much of the country. In those books various characters drive SUVs through the rubble of Chicago and the wasteland of its postwar suburbs. As Tris and Tobias see some of the fringes surrounding the city and do some exploring there from their base in the former O’Hare Airport, I began to feel like I was in one of those Left Behind novels.

Fortunately, that feeling was short-lived. I say that because the driving back and forth in postwar Chicago in the Left Behind stories was interminable. That series was originally supposed to be about half a dozen books, but the first books proved to be so popular that the authors and publishers decided to come out with a total of sixteen books in the series. As a result, there was a lot of padding to make the tale over twice as long. While I got a kick out of the first book or two in the series, I quit after book three because I just got tired of reading about car chases in depopulated Chicago.

Thankfully, Allegiant does not go that route. This is volume three of a trilogy. The story has an ending with the third volume. The SUV forays in Allegiant add to the plot or, at the very least, provide some helpful background information.

There are echoes of a traditional world view here, perhaps betrayed in some of the language. People like Tris’s mother who dies to save the lives of others was “laying down your life.” (509 cf. John 15:13). Tris says to Tobias, “[Y]ou’re still the only person sharp enough to sharpen someone like me.” (392 cf. Proverbs 27:17 KJV)

This is what makes the Divergent trilogy both appealing and satisfying. Yes, there is a fascinating and believable sci-fi dystopia. Yes, there is a lot of conflict—both internal and external. Yes, there is a lot of action in all three books. But at its core, it reminds us of what it means to be a human being—with all our talents and flaws, joys and sorrows. And what a noble potential there is in each of us!