65 pages • 2 hours read
Allegiant
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Themes
The Illusion of Control
One of the novel’s most prevalent themes is the illusion of control. One place this illusion exists is within the different government entities. Within Chicago, Evelyn’s government forces its people into submission through violence and threats. Evelyn particularly wants to control the Allegiant since they are the greatest threat to her power. She dissolved the factions under the premise that they create division and prevent individual choice, though the factions are the reason Chicago has survived so long. The Allegiant want to restore the faction system and threaten to take away Evelyn’s control over the city. To maintain her control, Evelyn keeps everyone “trapped in the city, controlled by armed factionless patrolling the streets. She knows that whoever holds the guns holds the power” (12). Evelyn uses new rules and regulations in addition to the guns to help maintain law and order, ensuring she remains in power and the Allegiant stay subdued.
The Bureau of Genetic welfare likewise uses control over its people to maintain the status quo and to keep the experiment in Chicago running. The Bureau developed the serums used in the city, and the Bureau uses them itself when necessary. Likewise, the Bureau uses extensive surveillance within Chicago and the fringe to ensure they know what’s happening in both locations and to take action against any uprisings. While the Bureau doesn’t live with a faction system, it’s part of the government organization that established that system. The factions are “an artificial system, designed by scientists to keep [the characters] under control for as long as possible” (237). Thus, the Bureau controls its people and helps Chicago maintain its control in the hopes that the city will continue producing healed genes. Finally, the Bureau uses propaganda to control “the genetically damaged population by teaching them that there’s something wrong with them and control the genetically pure population by teaching them that they’re healed and whole” (253). The use of propaganda perpetuates that there is a genetic problem they must solve, justifying their means of solving it.
Some characters also struggle with a false sense of control on a more personal level. Tobias continuously works in his fear landscape so his fear can’t control him. However, as he struggles to understand his relationship with his parents and new identity, Tobias feels he has lost control of who he has become. This stems primarily from his parents’ inability to make peace with each other or with him and his desire to be validated by his parents. On the other hand, Tris realizes how little control she has when she goes on the airplane ride. She sees how expansive the land is around Chicago and realizes the “world is so massive that it is completely out of [their] control, that [they] cannot possibly be as large as [they] feel” (187). She finally understands that all the control she sees in Chicago with its tyrannical leaders is simply an illusion. The characters have little control over what happens to them and are often at the mercy of someone else’s choices.
Desire for Freedom
Another theme developed throughout the novel is a desire for freedom. In some instances, the desire for freedom relates to a physical location. When the book opens, Evelyn has Tris imprisoned in Erudite Headquarters. Tris longs for freedom not just from her cell but from the city altogether: “[…] Every part of me, every fiber and nerve, is straining toward freedom, not just from this cell but from the prison of the city beyond it” (3). Her quest for freedom leads her outside the city fence and into the Bureau’s compound. Once there, Tris learns about her mother’s life and upbringing and that the Bureau is not the benevolent organization it portrays itself to be. Thus, Tris continues to seek freedom from the Bureau and any government involvement in her life. Her death ultimately brings her that freedom, but it also provides freedom for Chicago because she dies resetting the Bureau and ending their obsession with genetic purity. Once the group leaves Chicago, Christina demands that the Bureau allow them to leave the compound at any time, illustrating the group’s constant desire for freedom: “Wherever we go, we have to be free to leave at any time” (107).
Some of the characters seek mental or emotional freedom instead of freedom from a physical location. For example, Tobias wants freedom from his parents’ oppression and contention. He thinks he can escape them when he leaves the city. However, Tobias watches them on the surveillance cameras and watches his father’s verdict, which Evelyn broadcasts to the city. Tobias is eventually able to reconcile with his mother, but he never makes amends with Marcus, choosing instead to move on and leave his father behind. It’s a decision that finally brings him mental freedom: “Resettling Marcus would mean erasing the man I hate and fear from the world. It would mean my freedom from his influence” (441).
The desire for freedom is so strong that the denial of it becomes another tool for control used by leaders even after factions have been eliminated: “But Evelyn hasn’t liberated us like she thinks—she’s just made us all factionless. She’s afraid of what we would choose if we were given actual freedom” (20). While people have been freed from the constraints imposed by adherence to faction traits, the liberation only stirs a desire for actual freedom, which becomes a driving element of the plot as the Allegiant strive to be free from the Bureau’s control.
The Threat of the Other
A final theme found in the novel is the threat the Other presents to the stability and peace of the system. In one sense, the Other is represented by the people who live outside Chicago. Before Tris and her friends ventured outside Chicago’s fence, no one in Chicago knew who, if anyone, lived beyond the city boundary. This empty, unknown space creates a sense of fear and control, which Chicago’s leaders use to threaten and control their citizens. Fear of the outside is so intense that Evelyn sentences Marcus to exile beyond the city fence as punishment for his crimes against her and her leadership. Further, Evelyn, along with many of her citizens, believes the outsiders want their help only to take advantage of them afterward. She wants to focus on helping and healing her city before assisting others with their problems. Likewise, those living outside Chicago’s boundary inspire Tris and her friends to discover who might be out there, but there is still a fear of the unknown pervasive in the group as they leave Chicago.
Another outside threat to the government’s system is the fringe. The fringe is where the genetically damaged live. The Bureau makes this marginalized community feel like they are lesser citizens than those with pure genes. Likewise, the Bureau keeps the fringe under constant surveillance and even invades the fringe communities to take their children back to the Bureau to live. When necessary, the Bureau also uses the memory serum on the people in the fringe, forcing them to forget everything. The people living in the fringe are aware of the separation by genetics. When a woman named Amy pulls Tris into her home to save her from the uprising, she tells Tris that Chicago is “perpetuating the belief that genetically damaged people need to be fixed—that they’re damaged, period, which they […] are not” (350). This conversation teaches Tris that the city she calls home propagates the discrimination and marginalization of the genetically damaged.
A final group represented by the Other is the genetically damaged. Some of the people living and working at the Bureau’s compound are deemed genetically damaged and are unable to promote to certain job positions. The Bureau even treats the GDs differently when punishing them for criminal offenses. When the Bureau punishes Nita for her attack on the Bureau, she is not sentenced to death because they “can’t have the same behavioral expectations for those with damaged genes as [they] do for those with pure genes” (304). Likewise, the Bureau is lenient with Tobias’s punishment, stating he is genetically deficient. The Bureau values genetic purity over moral behavior, which helps them overlook their own immoral actions. At the same time, they appear to be more kind to the genetically damaged when they’re actually limiting and hurting those with genetic differences. This is made right at the end of the novel when Tris triggers the memory serum and resets the people at the Bureau. From that point, they will no longer be afraid of genetic differences and will no longer seek to fix those they think are genetically damaged.
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