Allegiant question

I don't have a problem with Tris' death. Death is realistic. Teenagers die. Children die. It's a fact of life. Sometimes they die for something meaningful, but usually it's tragic and a waste of life.
Tris was a waste. It wasn't the fact that she died, it was the how and why that bothered me.

And yes, selflessness is great, but there's a point where it's the opposite. I personally feel that Tris' death falls more in the selfish category.
And that's beside all the stupid plot holes and unrealisticness of the situation.

Tris' parents sacrificed their lives so that she could live. So she could do something great with her life. Her turning around and committing suicide is a slap in the face to them. Not that I'd necessarily put her death into the suicide category - it's arguable at least, but there were several times when she practically attempted it in other instances.

Caleb deserved to die. That's not to say he had to, but he deserved it - he facilitated the death of a bunch of people, including his parents and he attempted to have his sister killed. Forgiveness is great, but it does not erase consequences. I'm not saying they should have just shot him right there, but he should have been the one to carry out the mission as penance.
Tris taking his place, not only minimizes what her parents did, but it also takes away his chance to redeem himself. A life of guilt does no one any good. And if he wasn't guilty, he didn't deserve to be alive.

So yeah, Tris' death was stupid and selfish. That's my opinion anyway.

In addition to that, Veronica Roth shared she was completely distraught over the situation. She literally couldn't find a way to get Tris out of the situation.

Pardon my language, but Bull. Shit.

The ENTIRE SITUATION that Tris was in was DELIBERATELY CONTRIVED to force her death to happen. The whole plot was designed and manipulated, without regard to logic or believability, to force her into a death trap so she would HAVE to make a sacrificial choice.

Have you guys heard of an "idiot plot"? Look it up, it's an actual literary trope. Basically, it's a story whose plot is held together by the characters all being/acting like idiots, whereby the entire plot would fall apart if any of the characters, at any point, ever decided to not be an idiot and exercise a shred of intellect or common sense. It's acceptable when the story is a farce, where logical behavior is not required and the characters essentially are little more than cartoons. But when the story is to be taken seriously and the characters are established as "real," an idiot plot is basically a big contrived plot hole. And that is what the conflict in Allegiant, the circumstances surrounding Tris's death, is built on. Because the whole "suicide mission" they decide to do was so blatantly unnecessary and ridiculous that it only makes sense if you accept that all of the characters involved turned into idiots.

And I don't. I did not for one moment believe that these previously semi-intelligent people would unilaterally decide on the STUPIDEST course of action possible by blithely accepting that a SUICIDE MISSION was the only way to get what they needed to solve their problem, making no effort whatsoever in the several days they had to plan this death march to actually come up with a solution that actually didn't involve, you know, suicide. No attempt whatsoever to come up with another way to get into the Weapons Lab without deliberately setting off the death serum booby trap. No attempt whatsoever to find another way to get the memory serum without having to go into the Weapons Lab in the first place. No attempt whatsoever to find another way to stop the Bureau without having to use memory serum in the first place. Did I mention they had days to sit on this plan? Yet it just never dawns on them to even try think of something else besides the plan that involves one of them killing themselves. That's believable ... and convenient, if you happen to be writing a story where you want the main character to sacrifice herself in the end and need to invent an excuse for it to happen.

And then, once we're in this utterly preposterous situation, what happens? Of course, she would just HAPPEN to drop her gun outside, right before she just HAPPENS to be met by the dude in a wheelchair who just HAPPENS to have his own gun even though it's very unlikely he's ever even used one before. And then, rather than take two seconds to at least try to disarm him, she just HAPPENS to choose instead to do the very thing she knows will prompt Wheelchair Man to shoot her. And Wheelchair Man, despite the fact that he is in a wheelchair and, as mentioned, likely has no experience operating a fireman, just HAPPENS to be a crackshot and fires two fatal shots, because he just HAPPENS to not care about killing the daughter of the woman he loved even though this girl just HAPPENS to be the most magnificent specimen of genetic purity he's ever seen and therefore would be the absolute last person he would want to get rid of but just HAPPENS to do it anyway.

The sheer amount of contrivances and illogical conveniences that VR had to force into the story in order to get this ending was mind-boggling and an insult to anyone with an IQ over 7. So for her to say that she wished she could think of a way to get Tris out of that situation, that she didn't want it to have to happen that way, to act like this was some unavoidable or uncontrollable scenario that she wanted to find a way to change - she is so full of shit I can't even. She FORCED the situation to happen that way! She wanted it to happen, she planned for it to happen, and she's such a lousy writer that she couldn't execute it in a way that didn't make it quite obvious that the ONLY reason any of it was happening was BECAUSE she wanted it to happen. The entire plot was contrived AROUND this ending to MAKE it happen, and common sense and logic were thrown out the window in the actual scene itself in order to make sure she actually died! Is she kidding me with this? Woman is an idiot. If she really wished there was a way out of this situation, didn't want it to have to happen, then she should have thrown the whole book out and started over with an organic plot that followed its own internal logic to a natural and authentic conclusion instead of a contrived plot that was deliberately written around an ending that exists purely to satisfy the author's external goals.

Pfft. Couldn't pull Tris out of the situation? Sure she could. No, not by having Wheelchair Man just drop his gun or have her magically survive the bullets. Back it up. How about we just NOT write David into the scene at all? Back it up again. How about we NOT have Tris go into the Weapons Lab at all? Back the eff up once more. How about we NOT create this ridiculous situation in the first place? How about that? There were plenty of ways to pull Tris out of that situation, but that would kind of get in the way of the author's plan to force everything to make it happen. She wanted no such thing. She wouldn't have set up everything this way, built an idiot plot around it to force it along, if she didn't want it to happen. She says she thought using her "authorial hand" to pull Tris out of the situation would be "dishonest" and "manipulative." Give me a f'ing break. It was her authorial hand interfering in the story and twisting the plot and characters out of logic to force Tris into that ridiculous situation in the first place. The entire storyline was dishonest and manipulative - all to steer the story where SHE wanted it to go. Like I said, Veronica Roth is full of shit.

I'm telling you. Contrived plot, contrived ending, contrived point. And I would love to get into how flawed, problematic, immature and ill-thought out the whole point is, but I could be here for another 50 paragraphs.

Deaths of young people isn't justifiable, but it happens daily in reality, even to those younger than Tris. Many people are desensitised or choose to ignore or live in ignorance of the plight of children around the world, and Tris's death is a reminder of that reality, that people can die easily, that death can be very subdue affair and isn't some epic scene of greatness, it's sad and distressing.

The mother bit was added to lessen the blow, to find a silver lining for those who believe in the afterlife or merely a figment to the rest who don't believe but at least comforted Tris, not to justify it.

She wasn't planning on dying, she believed she had a chance to survive the serum, she didn't bargain someone being there with a gun.

a final tasteless ... I understand, but I don´t like ... and please Roth, your saved her from worse situation. hhmmmm goodbye Tris...

Look,death is reality.
You cannot save anyone from it or help them.If Tris made the decision to die,well that's on her.
I also don't feel like the death had a lot of meaning to it.To save Caleb.
I get that she wanted to save him but she also survived everything else.
I hope you see my point here.

I read Roth's take on Tris's death and although I felt intellectually that was beautiful and well thought out what she said about it was...

I still more or less saw through Tris's eyes and actions throughout the books this sort of thing was going to happen. Actually tripled once she joined Dauntless in the first place. She wanted more from life and she got it. She wanted to find herself and boy did she get some lessons to spank her big time.

However, all I can say is when Jeanine showed Tris proof of her own mental neurons leading to her(Tris), being a too stupid to live character in Insurgent, that told me all I ever needed to now about Tris's character and in a word or two, put the writing on the wall for me how things would end for her in this series.

Tris kind of got annoying towards the end but she didnt take into consideration that she would be leaving Tobias alone, who had nobody but her!

I don't mind that Tris died, if she had maybe died to save someone else, but not stupid Caleb.

I just hated that she always made such stupid selfish decision. Although realistically people die all the time, this way just seems so stupid of her.

In a way I am glad she died because she was so damn stupid. Her parents died so she could live and she was so over confident in herself she thought she was practically invincible. That's why she did it.

I just read the book and I feel so bad that Tris had to die. There could have been other options, like Peter or Caleb could have just ran and Tris would have had his back. Even if Tris was the one who was best for the job, she could have brought a gun with her. More than I feel bad about the Tris, I feel bad for Tobias. Just less than 30 pages before Tris dies, Tobias was planning their future, it seemed like nothing could have gone wrong in their lives. I feel bad that their love story had to end just like that. There could have been a better way to end the story.

I didn't have a problem with the fact the Tris died, but I didn't like how she died. Veronica Roth still played the invincibility card by allowing her to survive the death serum which I thought was unnecessary.

By making her invincible to the death serum, I think she Tris had an unrealistic amount of power, making her some kind of super human - more so than Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. At least when they survived, it made sense. With Tris, she could have easily died because the death serum, and the book could have still had the exact same outcome.

I don't feel that it's necessarily bad that Tris hardly thought of Tobias or Caleb in her last moments. She loved Tobias and she did her best to make sure that he knew that. As for Caleb, he hurt her time and time again. She made it pretty clear how she felt about him and his actions. Maybe someday they could have healed but given the chances that he had, I doubt it. Tris was thinking about the greater good when she took her chances, and that's okay.

I also loved watching her character development throughout the novels. Watching her struggle and learn to find and accept herself played a key part in her death as far as the people she loved and cared about, the worries she didn't have because she'd accepted things I suppose

The death of a main character at the end of a book, or series of books, is a hard thing for most writers to write about. Regardless of whether the readers like the characters or not, the writer, (at least this writer,) has become emotionally involved with all the characters as if they are close, dear friends. Even if the intent from the beginning is to kill off said character, getting from the first word to the last forges a bond with the character that makes it difficult to put those final words on the page.

That being said, I loved the ending in principle. I did think it rather rushed and contrived but the fact that VR made the decision to end Tris's life and stuck to it was a refreshing change to the standard "And they lived happily ever after" tripe (IE Breaking Dawn, Harry Potter, et al). YA fiction doesn't need to have a happy ending where all the characters live happily ever after. Death happens and to insult an entire group of readers by always showing a happy ending is, at the least, boring and expected.

For myself, all the characters I have killed off in my books meant something to me. I got to know them while telling their stories. I became a part of their lives as their stories unfolded before my eyes and under my fingers. I never planned to kill them off, it was how the story unfolded - just like life unfolds in ways we don't always expect. And I cried when they died, like I would a dear friend. But their stories would have been so much less "true" had I found a way for everyone to live.

Good people die and good characters die. Bad people live and bad characters live. I truly believe as a writer that I need to tell the truest story of my character's lives that I can. Even the things that aren't so pleasant. I think VR did that.