It's time for Feature and Follow Friday!
This week's question: Change the Plot. If you could, what book would you change the ending or a plot thread? Go ahead and do it...change it.
If you haven't read Allegiant by Veronica Roth. You may want to skip this post. My suggested plot thread change may be considered a spoiler. Proceed at your own risk.
There's a reason I posted my review of Allegiant by Veronica Roth earlier today. After I finished the book and chatted with a few of my friends (Hi Karla! Hi Jade!) I knew that this would be the focus of my Feature & Follow post today.
There is a great message hidden in Allegiant that Roth barely touches on: Prejudice and the measures humans go through to either enforce or breakdown prejudice. You start get a glimmer of this message in Allegiant, but it wasn't enough.
More real world examples from history where decisions were made raise one group over another because one group was thought to be deficient in some way should have been shared. Nita, Matthew or even Amar would share that history with Tobias so his decision to help with the resistance would have more gravitas. Tobias would rally the troops behind George Santayana's quote "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." And based on how the serums were used in the experiments to quell revolts/revolutions, the idea of not being able to remember the past seems all the more grave. How can we better the human race if the government erases the memories of those involved in the fight for its betterment?
It would also have been helpful to SHOW more discrimination against the GDs. A lot of stories were told about other people or observations were made by outsiders, but I can't recall a single instance of discrimination against a main GD character that was described in detail. It kind of just happened in the background and was glossed over. If the discrimination was holding people back from advancing or keeping them in the Fringe, show the readers that. Give me something to make me mad so I can feel like I'm part of the fight for genetic equality.
With these two pieces in place, I would make Tris more forgiving or at least show more of an attempt at a reconciliation with Caleb. She fought so hard for forgiveness after killing Will, I found it hard that there wasn't a deeper reflection of what it would be like to forgive Caleb. If Tris had wrestled with this more, Caleb's decision would have had more power. Then when the final sacrifice was made, the emotional level would have gone from 10 to 11. I would have actually cared and maybe shed a tear (or two).
And last, but not least, stop the book after Chapter 52. It's not needed. This isn't a mystery novel; I don't need everything wrapped up in a nice tidy bow. Until the final book, this series was about Tris and how Tris was dealing with the challenges presented to her. Allegiant changed all of that with is narrator swaps. And perhaps that was the most difficult change for me. Suddenly it wasn't just about Tris and I didn't (and probably still don't) know Tobias well enough to care about his point of view. This started with Tris, end it with Tris; no matter how sad. Just end it there and let us cry together.
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