Allegiant Injustice

Tris ends up standing up for this young man who is being treated unfairly, even though she is outnumbered by his assailants. Normally we'd call her reckless, but in this case, it's nice that she's doing this simply to protect the rights of another person.

What are the different attitudes toward "damaged genes" in this book? Are they an excuse to discriminate against people? Are they an excuse for bad behavior? Do they determine the course of people's lives? Do they define the people who have them?

Tris is furious at how she believes David treated her mother. He basically sent her into a warzone and did nothing to save her when her life was in danger. But to look at things from the other side, could he have done anything to save her?

Tris's mom shows a distaste for injustice. She actually gets rewarded for this act: she's taken off the streets and into the Bureau, and she's given a new home. Perhaps her observers realize that someone with damaged genes wouldn't have had the conscience to do what she did… although would someone with a conscience actually kill a man? Is her guilt a sign of conscience?

Here we see the progression of Tris's mom's views toward injustice. As a teenager, she was willing to kill someone else to save one person. Now it seems she's willing to give her life to save many. (And from reading Divergent, we know how that ends…) What is the relationship between injustice and sacrifice in this novel? Why does Tris's mom think she needs to sacrifice herself?

Well, here's something that Tris's parents share in common: a hatred of seeing other people getting treated badly by people from a higher social class than they are. This is definitely something they passed on to their daughter, either through their genes or through the way they brought her up.

Tris is kind of like a whistleblower trying to bring down an evil corporation. Except in this case, the corporation is the government. Do you think 60 Minutes is still on the air to cover this?

Tris's mom basically gets canonized as the patron saint of Chicago in Allegiant. Do you believe that she did everything selflessly to combat injustice? Or did she have other motives?

To Tris, the injustice doesn't come from the genetic factor; it comes from the fact that people are being forced to live in filth and poverty. That, she thinks, is what's causing society to be dysfunctional. She feels that she needs to convince people to ignore the genetic stuff and focus on that. Do you think these issues are relevant to us today?

It's ironic that Tris does the same thing to the Bureau that the Bureau is trying to do to Chicago. By fighting injustice, does Tris commit an injustice of her own? Do the motives matter here, or is brainwashing bad no matter what the reasons are for doing it?