A Letter to Veronica Roth

I have yet to decide if I am going to keep this as an open letter online or actually send it. 

Dear Ms. Roth,

I have never written to a celebrity before. Yes, I absolutely consider best-selling novelists celebrities in their own right. I can admit I feel a little silly for doing so, knowing full well that the chances of you actually reading this are slim. Further, I understand that should this actually pass through the ranks to get to your eyes, it will be considered nothing more than any other piece of fan mail. However, the Divergent trilogy left such a strong impression that I actually felt compelled to write you.

I hopped on the Divergent bandwagon late. I am not typically a fan of young adult novels, however, upon the suggestion of family, I picked up Divergent. A cousin told me that if I enjoyed The Hunger Games trilogy, I would really love the Divergent trilogy. She said this series was even better and urged me to read it. So, in the summer of 2014, I picked up a copy of Divergent and dug in.

I read the book voraciously. Despite feeling like the opening was a carbon copy to the opening of The Hunger Games, I quickly fell in love with the book. I was drawn to the interesting dynamics of Tris’s family and her constant battle between acting Abnegation and Dauntless. I rooted for her throughout her training and anxiously hoped and waited for the budding romance between Tris and Four to erupt.  Upon finishing the first book, I picked up a copy of Insurgent on my lunch break. I read through it in two days.

My Literacy Selfie from National Literacy Day

While reading has been my favorite pastime my entire life, it is rare that I am so fully immersed in a storyline that I am actually thinking about it while not reading. If I wasn't reading this series, I was thinking about when I could start back up. I theorized about what would happen next, too eager to find out. I realized just how attached I was when I decided that a coworker looked exactly how I pictured Four to look.

Two days after beginning Insurgent, I bought Allegiant. I started it on a Saturday afternoon and by Saturday night, I had completed it. While this installment in the trilogy contained far less action than the previous two, I read the day away on the edge of my seat. I could not wait to find out what would happen; how it would end.

The only problem one encounters after reading an entire series in a week is realizing that once you look up from the pages, the world has continued going on without you. That everyone is totally oblivious to what you just experienced. You feel a little empty inside without those characters right by your side. Sometimes I even delay finishing a novel purposefully so as to delay the abandonment. However, with this trilogy, I absolutely, positively could not do that. Emotional attachment be damned, I could not wait to learn of the ending and where this storyline would go.

That ending, Ms. Roth, is entirely the reason for my writing. To be as blunt as possible, I have never been so disappointed in an ending in my 21 years of passionate reading.

I hated the way the series ended. I actually surprised myself because I was genuinely upset. More than upset, really. Embarassingly angry. For the first time in my life, upon completion of Allegiant, I hid the three books out of view and did not proudly display my completed reads on my living room bookshelf as the literary trophies they should be. I even had to wait months before writing this so I could have a clear mind instead of sounding like a rambling maniac.

Quite frankly, I strongly feel that whenever an author kills off a main character at the end is a cop out. It is an easy way to finish the story. A way to end it quickly and possibly through little explanation without drawing out the plot any further. Well, some stories just need to be told to their fullest. The characters and this storyline deserve completion. Tris’s death was a cop out. It was a cop out to your readers and she, as a character, deserved more respect than that.

I know it is a common argument that Tris’s death was the only realistic outcome. Many say that she was so invincible throughout the entire series that fate was bound to catch up with her. I’ve also heard that it was heroic for her to die and that it was really progressive for a female to die off as the heroin. While I respect and understand those reasonings, I think they’re garbage.

When I shut that paperback for the first time, tears still streaming down my face from the loss of someone I felt I personally knew, my mind started running. My initial reaction was definitely that of my 13 year-old fangirl past self. Tris and Four were supposed to be together. Love was supposed to prevail all and even if they were the last two to survive, they would make it work and rise above. After my fangirl-ness passed, I realized I was upset for more than just the lack of it ending as a love story. The amount of questions left behind is why I fully believe the ending was a cop out.

First of all, Tris’s death doesn’t make sense. As a Divergent, she is immune to all of the serums. Even though the death serum was explicitly said to be the strongest and most dangerous of all serums, as someone immune to everything else, she should have been able to survive. Tris saw herself as a martyr, but when she nearly died at the hands of Four’s mother, she realized she did not want to die. She wanted to live because she knew she had a far greater purpose alive. Why would she volunteer to take her brother’s spot when she was clearly ok with him dying to prove he actually was loyal to the family? Furthermore, she was fighting so hard to avenge her parents’ deaths. They both died to save her. Why would she go on a suicide mission when her life meant her parents died with purpose, though tragically. If she couldn’t even save herself, her parents died for nothing. They lost their lives just for her to die shortly thereafter. And just like her parents, her death led to no resolve.

Though I never appreciate a main character’s death as a way to finish the story, if the death at least has a point in the plot, I can understand it. There was not really a vengeance for Tris’s death. It didn’t make Four fight any harder or change anything in the new society. No one was fighting in her memory.

Finally, the writing style of the conclusion even felt like a cop out. I am sure the shortened and choppy paragraphs and sentences were a way to show the emptiness and change in Four. However, it felt like you were giving up, not Four. It doesn’t show that it was a different voice because his voice was sprinkled throughout the entire novel. It would have been more effective to only use Four’s voice  after Tris’s death. That would have shown a far greater difference in perspective.  The final chapters felt lackluster, as best.

I mourned the loss of Tris but I was far more perturbed that a series I enjoyed so much ended so flatly. I know you have your reasons for ending the series the way you did. Ultimately, it is your writer’s prerogative to do whatever you wish with your work, but I just want you to know that as someone who enjoys nothing more than a good read, this series turned out to be the ultimate disappointment.

Best,

Monica Steinbrecher