Divergent Friendship

When you're living in Chicago after the apocalypse (or, really, Chicago even before the apocalypse), it's useful to have friends who will support you. Especially if you've just abandoned your family and are facing competition from some power-hungry enemies. But as helpful as friends can be (unless they're mind-controlled), it can sometimes be hard to deal with friends, especially if you haven't had them before. Divergent's Tris is new to the whole friends thing, so when she's trying to figure out her identity, she also has to work through friend stuff, too.

Questions About Friendship

1. Is friendship ever a bad thing in this book? Are there any friendships that aren't good for Tris? 
2. How do characters deal with their friendlessness and loneliness? Or does everyone have at least one friend?
3. How does Tris manage when she has different groups of friends, like the transfers and the Dauntless initiates? Is there any way to safely balance those two groups? Or does she just have to do her usual (that is, feel guilty)?
4. How do friends help or harm Tris's search for identity? And what about Four—is he a friend who helps or harms her search for identity, or is being a boyfriend something totally different?

Chew on This

Friends in Divergent are the kind of people you can tell secrets to. That means Tris doesn't really have any friends.

In Divergent, no adults have friends—they have co-conspirators and family, but no friends.