Allegiant

Tobias Eaton is a secondary protagonist and somewhat of a foil to Tris’s character. Tobias is a very tough man who, like Tris, can fight his way out of any conflict and earns the respect of many people because of it. However, unlike Tris, he isn’t able to adapt to his new identity at the Bureau after learning he’s not Divergent. Tobias buys into the idea that he is damaged and has to fight to remember that his genes do not determine who he is. He is a great leader, but Tobias often gets into trouble when he tries to follow the leadership of others, illustrated when he follows Nita’s plan and ends up arrested and in conflict with Tris.

Tobias also spends much of the novel overcoming his insecurities and fears. As Dauntless, he’s expected to use the fear landscape to lessen his fears, of which he famously only has four. Yet Tobias is almost obsessive in using his landscape to overcome those fears. He enters his landscape frequently and still finds himself most afraid of turning into his abusive father. Once at the Bureau, Tobias must overcome the idea of being broken because his genes aren’t as healed as some. He does eventually overcome all of his insecurities and weaknesses—especially noteworthy given Tris’s death—and he takes part in building the new Chicago as Johana’s assistant. Thus, he is a dynamic character who overcomes his character flaws and becomes stronger in the end.

Evelyn Johnson is Tobias’s mother and a secondary antagonist in the novel. She is the new leader of Chicago after Jeanine Matthews’ death at the end of Insurgent. Evelyn is a ruthless leader who will do anything to destroy the faction system and see that it never returns, thus overthrowing one authoritarian government to establish another. However, Evelyn overestimates her power and security and thinks that because she has control of the city’s weapons, she controls all of its citizens. Evelyn feels the factions are to blame for the city’s problems, yet the Allegiant recognize the factions’ benefits. The two create enough conflict that the Bureau feels the need to step in before the government shuts the city down completely.

Evelyn is so devoted to her cause that she loses sight of her job as a mother, giving up Tobias for the sake of her power over Chicago. However, Evelyn mourns the loss of her son when Tobias leaves the city and shows her development in character when she chooses Tobias over being Chicago’s leader. This choice not only gives back her son but also shows she’s willing to make peace with Marcus, saving Chicago from unavoidable war and destruction.

Marcus Eaton is Evelyn’s husband and Tobias’s father. He was abusive to his family, especially Tobias, creating a deep rift between the two characters. Marcus was also a leader of Abnegation at the time Jeanine used the Dauntless simulation serum to attack and destroy the faction. As Tobias describes, Marcus can compartmentalize his personality, so the influential leader the Abnegation saw is a very different man than the one Tobias and Evelyn had to endure. However, at his core, Marcus is a weak and cowardly man. Marcus is one of the few characters at the novel’s end who does not have a place in the new Chicago. Roth explains what happens to almost all of the main characters, yet she only mentions that Tobias has overcome his need for validation from his father and that Marcus is wandering outside the city. This end is fitting for Marcus, who abused his wife and son and only sought power and position.

These characters are from Chicago and play a part in the entire Divergent series. They each play a pivotal role in stopping the destruction of Chicago and ending the war on genetic imperfection. Caleb, Tris’s brother, is intelligent and chooses Erudite at his Choosing Ceremony. However, this choice leads Caleb to betray Tris to Jeanine Matthews in Insurgent, something Tris hates him for during the majority of Allegiant. Despite his intelligence, Caleb doesn’t realize he makes poor choices and can be a bad person. This is especially true when he values his life and safety over that of other people. At the end of Allegiant, Caleb is willing to sacrifice himself to gain Tris’s forgiveness and to redeem himself in the sight of others. Of course, Tris knows she can’t allow him to make this sacrifice, so she dies partly due to Caleb’s weakness.

Christina leaves Chicago with Tris and Tobias and is Tris’s best friend. Though she chose Dauntless as her faction, Christina shows her strong moral character when she forgives Tris for killing her boyfriend and Tobias for taking part in the attack that eventually kills Uriah. Christina also illustrates a strong sense of intuition and comforts Tris in moments of stress and sadness without Tris having to say anything.

Cara and Johana are leaders of the Allegiant and are very level-headed, capable leaders. Cara goes with Tris and Tobias to the Bureau, and her logical outlook on life allows her to help others, especially Tobias, overcome some of their struggles while trying to make sense of their new identities. Johana remains in Chicago and fights Evelyn, hoping to restore the faction system. She is a fair and honest leader, yet she is also willing to take risks to ensure the survival of her people. In the end, the citizens of Chicago elect Johana as their new leader, illustrating her followers’ great respect for her.

Finally, Peter is one of the more dynamic characters in the novel, though not necessarily by his own choice. He has always been violent and cruel, exemplified by his ruthless behavior as an initiate to Dauntless in Divergent. Peter continues this behavior in Allegiant but realizes this violent person is not who he wants to be. However, because his morals are too weak to allow him to change on his own, he uses memory serum to reset himself. This shows that his character is maturing and developing, yet Peter is still incapable of making the right choices on his own. His friends hear he is working somewhere in another city and doing a job that suits him, and this is all the reader knows about what happens to Peter at the end of the novel.

David, Nita, and Matthew are new characters in the series, and all originate from the Bureau. David, like Natalie, grew up in a city and had to survive on his own when his parents went to prison. To escape the orphanages, he and his siblings fled to the fringe, where he was the only one to survive. David made it to the Bureau and eventually became its leader. However, as the Bureau’s leader, David buys into the idea that genetic damage denotes a damaged person and uses questionable methods to rid the world of that impurity. David functions as an antagonist, especially when he kills Tris for trying to rest the Bureau. Yet he doesn’t come across as entirely evil. Instead, he functions more as a figurehead of the true antagonist, the mentality that differences among people are something to be feared and corrected.

Nita seems to be a protagonist akin to Tris and Tobias. She wants to take the Bureau’s power and stop its focus on fixing genetic differences. However, Nita’s methods are violent and just as evil as those she’s trying to stop. So, she appears to be on Tris and Tobias’s side, yet she is willing to hurt and kill the innocent to fix what she sees as incorrect.

Matthew, on the other hand, hates the Bureau but does not condone violence as the means to stop it. He supports Nita’s plan to take some of the Bureau’s power, but when he discovers her intention to steal the death serum and use it to kill government officials, he steps back and refuses to participate. As Tobias discovers, Matthew has a personal investment in defeating the Bureau, as his girlfriend died in an attack. The Bureau did little to punish her attackers, so Matthew has been quietly waiting for the chance to take his revenge. Despite his hurt and anger, Matthew refuses to compromise his morals and use violence to stop the Bureau as Nita does.