*SPOILERS
Two-faced characters seem to be a
very common theme in books. It can surprise the reader and make him/her think
about what led up to it. Well Allegiant, by Veronica Roth, is no exception. What I am focusing on more specifically is David, a man with a difficult past who had relations to Tris's (the main character) mom who was killed. Later in the book you soon discover he
is far from shuffled. He becomes a monster, a man willing to do almost anything
to preserve the sick little world he is dictating, even murdering someone he
cares about. This happens over time, in different ways. First he loses the women he loves, then he kills Tris. To wrap that up, the author portrays how David is calm and collected on the outside, but shuffled and internally
isolated on the inside.
At the beginning of the story, Tris enters a new world. she leaves her old one behind just to discover this new world isn't far from her own. The world she called home was nothing than an experiment and that divergent means your genes are perfect. She also uncovers some intense details about her mother's past. David is like a mystery character. He seems to be in love with Tris's mom. At one point he plans to bomb the experiment with the memory serum. This will erase their memory forever, leaving them with a blank slate. In desperation Tris releases the serum onto the workers making them forget everything, and in the process is killed by David of all people. He admits to having loved her mother, but that was history. I was surprised that David would kill her, and i was kind of frustrated at the author for that. It was a sly was of ending a book.
The author shows this transformation through a variety of ways, one way including letters. The letters are from before Tris's mom moved to the experiments. At the time, David didn't know it was going to be forever. She rights, "I'm sorry, but its not going to happen the way we planned it. I can't do it. I know you're going to think I'm being a stupid teenager but this is my life and if I'm going to be here for years." In this paragraph Tris's mom is in a way defending herself. she seems mad. This gives me the idea that David is aggravated and jealous Another example is a picture of David and Tris's mom. "She took a trip back to us once," He says. Before she settled into motherhood." These resemble the older days of their youth, when David was clearly not the man he is today.
What shocked me most was the last two decisions David made before his memory was erased. David was held hostage by Nita, who wanted to release the death serum to kill the government. David was refusing to tell a soul, when Tris appears and desperately, she uses him as a shield. "Then I press one of my guns to the back of his head. They all freeze. -Fire, and I will shoot him in the head, I say." Even after Tris does that David takes her under his wing. "You are so very brave," he says. Its something thats important for a future council member to see." But what shock me the most is the fatal decision David makes to kill Tris. I felt like that was out of the blue, and I struggled to see his motive in this. I understood she needed to die, but why did he put it in his hands? Why did he make it his burden? But most importantly, what drove David to that point?
The author allowed beams of information throughout the text to give us
hints and clues about David’s state of mind. He is rejected, accepted, and
unaffected when he kills Tris. Although there is no exact answer to what
motivated this character to physically kill Tris and what drove him to this level of insanity, but at least we can
understand what led up to it.
