Beatrice Prior is a 16-year-old girl who serves as the novel’s protagonist and narrator. She has grown up in Abnegation but never felt that she belongs there. She knows that it must look ideal from the outside, but she finds its uniformity stifling and feels that she is not sufficiently selfless to be a member of this faction.

This is a topic that is on her mind at the start of the novel, as she is at the age when she is due to take an aptitude test to determine which faction she is best suited to. This test is intended to provide guidance, but it is at the choosing ceremony that she must make her final decision. She can either remain in her native faction with her family, or transfer to one of the other four factions. As she loves her family, this is not an easy decision.

However, Beatrice’s aptitude test results prove puzzling: the test is intended to rule out factions systematically until one is left. Unusually, Beatrice’s results are contradictory, and suggest three options: Abnegation, Erudite, and Dauntless. Erudite frequently criticize Abnegation, and she knows that she would never join that faction. Her remaining choices, then, are Abnegation and Dauntless.