Allegiant Literary Elements

Young Adult, Science Fiction

Chicago, Illinois

Allegiant is told from two separate point of views. Each chapter alternates between being narrated by Tris and by Tobias.

Thrilling; suspenseful; mysterious

The protagonists of the story are Tris and Tobias, while the antagonist is David, the leader of the Bureau.

Tris, Tobias, and their friends must work together to stop the Bureau and its leaders from releasing the memory serum to reset the memories of everyone in the city. At the same time, they must prevent the city from entering an all-out war between the Allegiant and Evelyn's factionless army.

Four convinces Evelyn to end the war and forms an alliance with the Allegiant. In the Bureau, Tris must release a serum to reset the memory of all of the Bureau's inhabitants, a suicide mission; her brother was going to enter the Weapons Lab until she decides to sacrifice herself. Tris successfully resets the Bureau, only to lose her life at the hands of David immediately thereafter.

In Chapter 13, when Johanna is leading Tris, Tobias, and their friends to the outskirts of the city, Johanna tells them about the serum that belongs to each of the factions. This is the first time that the memory serum (Abnegation's serum) is mentioned. This foreshadows the pivotal role that the memory serum eventually plays in the proceedings of the story once the group leaves the city.

In Chapter 15, after David tells Tris and her friends the truth about the city experiments and everything they need to know about genetic damage, David tells Tris that this must be a lot to process. Even Tris herself says that this is a huge understatement. Everything that David had just told them completely turned her world upside down. Her entire life inside the city was really nothing but a lie, and nothing could have prepared her for these revelations.

At one point, Tobias mentions Millennium Park, alluding to the fact that they are in Chicago. This is the one of many references that the reader gets telling him/her that the setting of the story is in Chicago. This setting is never explicitly stated until Tris leaves the city and the Bureau refers to it as the Chicago experiment. Another similar allusion is the Hancock tower.

See "Imagery" section of the guide.

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"There are buildings here, but they are not nearly as prominent as the makeshift homes, made of scrap metal and plastic tarps, pulled up right next to one another like hey are holding one another upright" (347).