Power Hierarchies in Allegiant

Jess Parrott 812

Allegiant by Veronica Roth: Power Hierarchies

            The book Allegiant by Veronica Roth is set in a dystopian future. And in a naturally unjust social environment, there are many power hierarchies.

            In the city, before the factions crashed, power was one of the main subjects. In a virtually controlled and micro-managed environment, the faction leaders acted as the presidents. And in the individual factions, everything decreased until the hierarchy ended at the new initiates. And even in the groups of initiates there were more than just regular social power hogs; the initiates who started out in that same factions gained control and the weaker initiates, often descending from Abnegation, were bullied and tormented endlessly. The majority of the citizens were not allowed to leave the city; and alike in The Giver by Lois Lowry, taught to fear what was outside the gates. All citizens were raised in fear. And that fear, for many many years, had lead the society to relative naive peace.  
But like in many dystopian novels, the power hierarchy is one of the most concrete foundations of the story. And often, it is what causes the main problem or crisis in the book.

            But when the factions crashed, a whole new power hierarchy is revealed. As the book goes on, the power hierarchies crash and crumble and behind those are even older and even more powerful individuals and groups. The Bureau of Genetic Welfare was revealed; and opened up a whole new world to Tris and her friends. They absorbed information that completely destroyed close to all the foundations they were raised on inside the city. The security cameras used by the Dauntless to monitor the city were directly connected to the Bureau. Now, Tris and her friends were finding out (and this fact lingered in many of their personal thoughts for a large part of the story; sometimes even subconsciously) that they had been watched and monitored constantly by a government that was using their whole world as an experiment. In fact, one of the first observations that Tris makes is about the social class system inside the Bureau. GPs, Genetically Pure humans, think above and beyond of themselves compared to GDs, Genetically Damaged humans, even though, being in this same power-hungry environment their whole lives want to gain equality and importantly, power, to overthrow GPs.

            The power hierarchy and social class system created in the Bureau has, rather than lead to peace like all the hierarchies in the book started out, created havoc and very extreme violence. The GPs tried to raise the GDs in making them believe that they were lesser; that they were incompetent. But the GPs somehow did not take into context that GDs have the same mind capacity and rose above the mockery. And in the city, one rebellion led to another and power hungry faction leaders started it all. In that case, the rebellion led to extreme havoc and ended a large amount of the citizens' lives. In fact, the only way that the GDs were slightly lesser was that they were imperfect. But as shown in the book, even perfect humans can cause horrible things. In a bigger picture, even in the Fringe, all the hierarchies in the book share similar founding problems that eventually made them all crumble.  Living in a very advanced yet controlled environment cannot contain; even if that is one of the founding principles that it is based on.