Allegiant Identity

The labels are a big part of everyone's identity in this book. It's like if you stopped calling something a banana, would it still be a banana? What would it be?

Cara tries to convince Tobias that his personality isn't 100% Dauntless. It's okay for him not be pretend to be super-duper brave all the time. He can dare to be vulnerable for once.

Whew. We finally understand what Divergent means. That explains everything. Right? Right? You mean Tris still struggles with her identity after this? Hmm, identity is a more complicated issue than she thought.

Yep, as we just said, you were wrong, Tris. Tris learns that defining her label does not really define her in any way. She has to do that herself and not depend on society to do it for her.

Good point, Amar. We wish he'd actually believe what he was saying, though. Later, he pretty much blames all of society's ills on genetic damage, boiling many people down to what might be an insignificant part of their identity. What about choices, Amar? What about choices?

Tobias ends up replacing one label with another. Will he learn that he isn't simply what society labels him? He can be his own person independent of that.

All that stuff we say about defining your identity by yourself… well, that's an important part of it, but it's not everything. Tobias learns a lot about himself through how Tris sees him. Since she actually loves him and isn't just a soulless government entity bent on labeling him, we'll allow it. Finding your own identity does require interacting with other people.

Taking this quote into consideration, does that mean that the factions and labels actually take away from people's humanity?

The bad guys in the Divergent trilogy can't simply be identified as "bad guys" in the same way that Tris and pals can't simply be labeled as "Dauntless," or "Erudite," or anything else. Their identities are much more complicated than that.

Okay, as silly as these labels have become by this point, they do still have some interesting things to say about human psychology. Someone brave and smart can act pretty darn evil, and someone brave and selfless (like Tris) might just end up dying in a blaze of glory. Nobody is ever just one thing.