Friendship Quotes in Divergent

We admit, this is kind of a weird quote to start talking about friendship. Here's Tris on the first night, and she's disgusted that Al can't keep it together. But Al is only expressing out loud what everyone ("the rest of us") is feeling. So maybe this quote shows a reason for strong friendships to form here: everyone here is going through the same feelings. They already have something in common.

If everyone feeling sad (but not crying about it) is a good foundation for friendship, this is the, uh, first floor of friendship: joking around and laughing together. Now, of course it's Will—the joker and teaser—who is leading this friendly moment, but even Tris joins in. But here's a question that's never answered by the book: why does she "force a laugh" at first? Is it just to fit in? Or is it because she's not used to laughing?

If you can't remember Susan, she's a neighbor from the Abnegation days who… well, we don't remember. Which is kind of the point: Abnegation don't talk about themselves (or laugh very much, since it's hard to joke about self-sacrifice), so you can't really make close friends there. Which means that when she arrives at the Dauntless compound, the whole having friends thing is totally new potatoes.

Tris doesn't choose to help Christina when Eric punishes her by making her hang over the chasm. But Al-the-crier has enough courage and comradeship to want to help the poor girl out, even if it means facing up to Eric, who's a dangerous and unfriendly guy. So who seems like the better friend here?

Competition doesn't mix so well with friendship in this book, even when the friends are on the same side. Here, Tris and Christina are on the same team in a paintball game. But when Christina grabs the flag, Tris—who came up with the plan—feels left out. Yes, Tris joins in the shouting and running, but at the end of the paragraph, she's still "off to the side."

Tris may be living in a dystopian Chicago where everyone is in some faction, which is totally unlike your life. But here she is experiencing something that you're probably familiar with: she's sharing a secret look with her friend Al, but it's an uncomfortable look because he like likes her. How very ordinary.

Since Tris isn't used to having friends, she makes some statements like this that make it pretty easy to see where the theme of friendship pops up. When something bothers Tris, she has friends to help her. So we could say that, in Divergent, friends are people who cheer you up.

Real talk: sometimes friends can get you down. Because they're all competing for the same thing, Tris and her friends sometimes fight—both literally (when they're punching and kicking in the arena) and, well, literally in a different way (when they're arguing about whether they can trust each other). Friendship sure is good and bad mixed together.

You've just read Four's character analysis of Al: he only wanted to be friends as long as he could be the big protector. Do you think that's a fair analysis of Al? And does that mean that Al's friendship was never really real?

If friends are the people who cheer you up (like Will and Christina) and protect you (like Al), what happens when you don't need cheering up or protecting—are they still your friends? And what about those people who only want to be friends as long as you're happy and don't need their help? That's the exact conundrum Tris is dealing with here and it's a very relatable problem. But don't worry, this problem will be solved by a war that ends up killing many of Tris's loved ones.