Who does the director want you to sympathize with and why?

In context, the book itself sympathizes with the protagonist, who is forced to choose her future, and as a result, is torn by the fact she must leave her family behind. In the novel, your choice of faction defines you more than anything else does. Tris was faced with two options: remain with her family in the faction in which she grew up, Abnegation, or transfer to another faction and start anew. Though her aptitude test is inconclusive - she could be a match to Abnegation, Erudite, or Dauntless - she chooses Dauntless because she feels it will allow her to discover her true self. But even this does not truly fit, and Tris spends the entire novel struggling to come to terms with the fact that because of her Divergence, none of the factions will ever truly define her the way they do for others. She develops her identity through her relationships with her friends and family and the difficult choices she is forced to make time and time again when faced with the struggles of both initiation and the impending war in her society. Divergent places huge importance on coming to terms with your identity, and in the end, Tris has to accept that she will never fit perfectly anywhere; she simply has to form her own path through her own choices, one step at a time.