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Tris, Tobias, and even a newly freed Caleb make it to the compound containing the group The Bureau of Genetic Welfare, which we find out is the hub for the giant life experiment that was Chicago and four other highly-populated Midwestern cities. Tris’ Divergence is a factor of “Genetically Pure” genes that have finally resurfaced within the experiment while people who aren’t Divergent are “Genetically Damaged”. It is revealed that Tobias is in fact not Divergent and he is GD which causes him to spiral into a deep depression of self-doubt and gets him into huge trouble with radical GD’s.

 

While all of this is going on, we’re getting flashback perspective in the form of Natalie Prior’s journal in which we find out she was originally from The Fringe (where non-Bureau members lived) and then was placed inside of Chicago as a GP to complete a mission. This part probably was my favorite—it is always neat when the narrator underestimates characters that have such an amazing and impactful position in the plot later on. I eat that up.

 

From there the plot gets more confusing. I’ve read some reviewers calling the middle plot exhausting. I know that the information they’re being bombarded with is being bombarded with us as well, but my head was spinning trying to keep up with who was the bad guy and who was the good guy. I guess that was the point.

 

And then, the final 40 pages come.

 

There is a plan to break into the Weapons Lab at the Bureau and they need someone to sacrifice themselves to get in. Since it’s heavily armed, a death serum spreads into the air and no one can resist it. Caleb volunteers as some sort of desperate attempt to regain Tris’ trust.

 

While this is going on, Tobias and the rest of their Divergent friends head back into the city to inoculate, make people immune from, a serum that is going to be released into Chicago to erase all of the citizen’s memories and start over. Tobias has enough of the inoculation to give one of his parents and he decides to give it to his mother, someone who he can patch up his relationship with in the future.

 

When the moment comes for Tris and Caleb to break into the Weapons Lab, Tris can see that Caleb is terrified and realizes it is her who needs to make the sacrifice. Tris grabs the backpack and storms into Weapons Lab, finding out quickly that she is immune to the death serum. But David, the corrupt leader of the Bureau, is inside. And something that I feared once I heard that the book would be told from split perspectives happened.

 

Tris dies.

 

You are lying if you say you didn’t flip through the rest of the book to see if Tris’ name showed back up in the chapters. She couldn’t really be dead, could she be? I didn’t cry then. I cried when Tobias’ chapter came back.

 

He doesn’t know in this moment when he’s happy with his mother again and that line where he hopes Tris is in a happy world—it gutted me. He didn’t even know yet. And then getting back to The Bureau and him describing Christina sobbing… I honestly lost it. It was at least 1 in the morning and I was sobbing.

 

Initially I was mad about her death, but Roth knew what she was doing. The giant motif of the entire book was about what was worth sacrificing for, love and family being a big one, and Tris gives that ultimate sacrifice in the end. Tobias heals in the eventually, talking about how he doesn’t hate the memories with her anymore and likes to replay them in his mind two years later. I thought what he said about people mending each other was really beautiful.

 

And wasn’t that the point? The world is bigger than we can even fathom and our mark is small, but it’s the relationships that we forge and find humanity in each person that makes life worth living.

 

Thank you, Veronica Roth, for making such a powerful and engrossing series.