Four Themes

Ablutophobia. Acarophobia. Acerophobia. Achluophobia. Acousticophobia. Acrophobia. These are just the first six phobias, alphabetically, of many on The Phobia List. We imagine the people who run th...

The concept of identity is right in the book's title: Four. It doesn't just mean that there are four long short stories in here. It's more of a reference to the main character's name, the name he c...

For a dystopian society, there are an awful lot of choices being made in Four. People get to choose their faction. They get to choose their job, their friends, and their living quarters. Some of th...

Dystopias are all about confinement, from the limited freedoms of women in The Handmaid's Tale to people imprisoned in their own districts in The Hunger Games. Like those two books, in the wor...

Victims of abuse, whether it's by a parent or spouse or other loved one, often think they're all alone. And their abuser wants it that way. Isolating people makes them weak and scared, and that's e...

In Four, each faction values different traits as strengths. Erudite values intelligence; candor, honesty; amity, kindness; abnegation, boring clothes; and dauntless, fearless physical power. With s...

The Dauntless faction values physical strength above all else, and like Fight Club, the best way to display your physical strength is to beat the snot out of another person. As a result, Dauntless...

You wouldn't think friendship would be a big deal in the Dauntless faction. Amity, sure: they're super-chummy. Abnegation, maybe. But Dauntless? They should be too busy beating the stuffing out of...

Even though this society lives by the motto "Faction before blood" (4.4) blood is still a factor in Four's life… and we don't mean the blood he draws with his fists, either. Four has the most com...