Veronica Roth's Allegiant Character Analysis

In Veronica Roth’s novel Allegiant, love can be shown through sacrifice, even if it means leaving those you love. Right before their plan to obtain the memory serum, Tobias explains to Tris: “They (The Abnegation) say that if the sacrifice is the ultimate way for that person to show you they love you, you should let them do it… That, in that situation, it’s the greatest gift you can give them.” (Roth 412) Then the realization hits Tris that Caleb, her brother, volunteered for the deadly mission to get the serum out of guilt, not love. “I love my brother. I love him, and he is quaking with terror at the thought of death.” (455) Caleb is still holding on to the burden of betraying Tris while he was working for Jeanine Matthews in Erudite
laboratories. “...I love him and all I can think, all I can hear in my mind, are the words I said to him a few days: I would never deliver you to your own execution.”(455) Tris now knows that she is about to watch Caleb attempt a mission that he won’t be able to complete. The death serum protecting the weapons lab will ultimately kill him, but on the other hand Tris is divergent and has a higher tolerance to the serums’ poison. Therefore, out of love, she spares Caleb’s life and takes over the mission. Approaching the weapons lab Tris comes face to face with death, the serum slowly sucking the life out of her. Then her mind drifts to her parents, and how they gave their lives for her. “They died for me. And now I have to stop other people from losing everything…. If I go to join my parents, I want to carry with me a good reason.” (468) Tris risked everything to not only save her brother, but to honor her mother and father and how they were taken from the world.