This means that, in order to discover who we are and what our personal moral stances on the issues in our lives entails, we have to go through a process of rejecting our parents. It’s normal, it’s healthy, and it can be very frightening. The Divergent novels tap into this fear, not only in the obvious ways, but also through the use of the archetypal Hero’s Journey. In its most basic form, the hero’s journey is this: a hero sets out on a quest to get something needed at home, accomplishes the quest and gets the prize, and then returns home with the prize in order to provide the help needed there. If you interpret the “prize” of the Divergent novels to be mature self-discovery, then it becomes clear that Tris is on this very same kind of journey throughout the series. Because of the trilogy’s structure, with each novel offering new layers of revelation about the true nature of society, it’s not obvious at the outset of Divergent exactly what it is that is needed in the society—what it is that Tris must venture out and return with.
