Born into Abnegation, 16-year-old Tris joins Dauntless at the Choosing Ceremony, beginning a new adventure and understanding of her own character. Tris loses both her mother and father, who is an Abnegation leader, in the first hours of the Erudite faction war. As the novel opens, Tris has also just killed her friend, Will, in self-defense. The battle and its aftermath, particularly Tris’s ability as a Divergent mind to evade Erudite mind-control, drive both the plot of the novel and Tris’s growth toward adulthood.

As a result of the trauma Tris sustained in the first novel and her subsequent feelings of guilt, she repeatedly risks her own life throughout this novel, culminating in the self-destructive but selfless act of turning herself over to Jeanine, rather than see anyone else suffer. Ultimately, her reckless, guilt-drive behavior forces her to confront the darkness within her: her suicidal thoughts and beliefs. 

As Jeanine tests and experiments upon Tris’s mind, Tris gains strength through her ability to defeat Jeanine’s simulation serums. For example, in the first simulation, Tris has a conversation with her mother, which Tris finds healing. Ultimately, Tris defeats Jeanine, as she states: “I laugh, mirthless, a mad laugh.