Last time, the Dauntless are criminally incompetent.
Today, into Dauntless headquarters which are apparently tunnels and since safety is for cowards presumably they collapse on people all the time and every now and then half the faction’s wiped out by poor ventilation.
“This is where we divide,” Lauren says. “The Dauntless-born initiates are with me. I assume you don’t need a tour of the place.”
Wouldn’t you want to be pressing unity on people as fast as you can? I mean, the transfer system only works if you can remold kids raised in a deliberately opposite culture into your own. And the best way to do that is keep them surrounded by people with the values you want to promote.
Apparently “most” are Dauntless-born and there are only nine transfers left.
Of those, I am the only Abnegation transfer, and there are no Amity transfers.
You already said the boy who wouldn’t jump was the only Amity.
Furthering the book’s hatred of real information, she looks at the eight other people and says they’re from Erudite and Candor. How many from each? Who the hell knows. For some reason she finds the Candor people surprising (It must require bravery to be honest all the time. I wouldn’t know. How fucking stupid are you?) and somehow Erudites being bravery aligned is so obvious it goes unremarked. Because when I think studying, I think bravery.
“My name is Four.”
Christina asks, “Four? Like the number?”
So Four’s different name than everyone else is in fact weird. Christina then also criticizes the name of the place they’re going, at which point Four flips out at her about how this isn’t Candor so shut the fuck up already.
It would probably be wise to be careful around Four, I realize. He seemed placid to me on the platform, but something about that stillness makes me wary now.
Dreamy blue eyes turns out to have a temper. Truly he is love interest material.
And so they enter the Pit, which is a giant cavern that’s supported by, oh let’s just say magic. There’s paths and steps all over without any barriers. I don’t know why she bothers to even mention that because no one would expect otherwise.
Forming the roof of the Pit are panes of glass and, above them, a building that lets in sunlight.
That, uh, actually that wouldn’t do much good. Glass stops UV light, humans need UV light. I mean it’s a lot better than nothing, but…
People are everywhere, all dressed in black
This continues to be the goth peer pressure faction.
She notes there are kids running around but no sign of the elderly and realizes she’s not even sure old Dauntless exist. You know, if they’re murdering their elderly, that seems like something Abnegation should’ve been concerned about.
She thinks about how nice Abnegation was, but also that chaos is awesome.
Four’s appearance seems tame from the front, by Dauntless standards, but when he turns around, I see a tattoo peeking out from the collar of his T-shirt.
And a single tattoo of unknown size is a big deal because…?
He’s led them to the counterpoint of their jump off the building.
the floor I stand on now ends at an iron barrier. As we approach the railing, I hear a roar—water, fast-moving water, crashing against rocks.
I look over the side. The floor drops off at a sharp angle, and several stories below us is a river. Gushing water strikes the wall beneath me and sprays upward. To my left, the water is calmer, but to my right, it is white, battling with rock.
“The chasm reminds us that there is a fine line between bravery and idiocy!” Four shouts. “A daredevil jump off this ledge will end your life. It has happened before and it will happen again. You’ve been warned.”
But the daredevil jump off the ledge before was fine?
I mean, you could say it was implied that the jump was survivable, but someone was killed just getting that far and the faction leader refused to say the jump was safe, instead that hey, who knows, maybe it is!
Then they head to the dining room, where we finally see them welcomed by the faction with applause and shouting. Then Tris boggles at hamburgers, which she has apparently never even seen before and needs explained to her, and Four tells her to put this mysterious red goo on it! So either Tris in particular is an idiot or there’s almost no media in this culture, and also there must be separate dining halls at the school for each faction. It also makes it seem more plausible that the kids have separate classes, since she must have never talked to other faction people for any length of time, but if so why remove them from school for faction education?
Then some new guy walks in.
His face is pierced in so many places I lose count, and his hair is long, dark, and greasy. But that isn’t what makes him look menacing. It is the coldness of his eyes as they sweep across the room.
So here’s Antagonist!
He’s already a leader, which surprises Christina because apparently Candor have superiority based on age, and Four’s all yeah we don’t give a shit about age.
I can tell she’s about to ask what I want to ask: Then what does matter?
Uh, competence? Display of faction virtues? Why would this even confuse you when you never said Abnegation picks based on age? Did Dauntless get “pick regardless of age” so everyone else has to do it by age?
Antagonist plunks down at their table and she’s called Stiff again as he doubts she’ll make it.
I mean to say something—to assure him that I will last, maybe—but words fail me. I don’t understand why, but I don’t want Eric to look at me any longer than he already has. I don’t want him to look at me ever again.
She yet again doesn’t see this as a lack of bravery.
Bravery seems like it means the ability to force yourself to do something necessary, with necessary including the mandatory daredevil shit you’re required to do or get kicked out, but not stuff like standing up for yourself.
Antagonist Eric acts like they’re friends but she says Four is tense.
Rivals, maybe
Tense and uncomfortable seem more like just hating the guy. But maybe you aren’t really familiar with hate.
but how could that be, if Eric is a leader and Four is not?
What does that have to do with anything?
It seems like Max, the guy met first, has been trying to promote Four and Four doesn’t wanna, which Eric is happy with.
Antagonist is an Erudite transfer, because these people really will not let that stuff go, so they were together as initiatives.
She tries asking what Four was and gets more sudden anger, but she faces him down and he’s distracted by other stuff. Christina then says Tris seems to have a deathwish, because Tris is special and that kind of thing isn’t totally normal for Dauntless types.
Later she finds out Antagonist Eric will be in charge of their initiation training and she’s all upset. She should just be grateful Dauntless bothers with a training component at all.
The training is eight to six with free time after that. So they’re not even trying to keep the new guys busy. And there’s stages of initiation and between those it’s just free time all day. She’s busy being amazed she can do what she wants, but you don’t want this, you want to jam the new guy’s faces into your culture and force assimilation! Oh, but you can’t leave the Dauntless HQ without an escort. On to the beds!
You will notice that there are ten beds and only nine of you. We anticipated that a higher proportion of you would make it this far.”
“But we started with twelve,” protests Christina.
Everyone seems to be getting dumber the longer this book goes on.
He tells us the transfers and Dauntless born are separate for the first stage. Yes we know that already. He adds that they’re still going to be ranked together. Ranking picks who gets the best jobs, and…
only the top ten initiates are made members.”
Because nothing says quality like having no objective standard.
On the brighter side we finally learn how many Dauntless-born there are: Eleven. Which means they’re almost the same number so I don’t know why she keeps saying there’s so many more Dauntless-born. Dauntless started at twelve and lost one. Transfers lost two, so they were eleven. Transfers are half their people so why do they treat transfers weirdly?
Also, Dauntless will produce twelve total factionless in return for ten faction members. The failure rate is over fifty percent. And this for a faction that must have a criminally high mortality rate.
Moreover, why the fuck are Erudite joining this faction when they should know it’s objectively a terrible choice? Obviously Tris is an idiot who didn’t know (and why wouldn’t Dauntless shout this from the rooftops, telling people you’re taking a huge risk would seem to weed out people who aren’t Dauntless in the first place) but there’s no excuse for Erudites not knowing.
(Also maybe this is why no one can interview Marcus’ son to resolve the Erudite/Candor feud, Dauntless killed him by accident before anyone could think to ask why he left.)
But instead of crying, like the Erudite girl, I feel colder. Harder.
I will be a member. I will.
And here’s where we see that yeah, she sure isn’t Abnegation.
They aren’t saying that on average only half the group makes it. And she isn’t even dignifying this by thinking that it’s a shame she’ll be taking it in place of someone else. That would be wholly acceptable. But it doesn’t even register! All she manages is that it’s a threat to her personally.
“Are you saying that if you had known this before the Choosing Ceremony, you wouldn’t have chosen Dauntless?” Eric snaps. “Because if that’s the case, you should get out now. If you are really one of us, it won’t matter to you that you might fail.
Then why not tell them?
Anyway. She’s very slightly unsettled to be sleeping in a room with boys, but I’d bet she’s never slept in the same room as anyone since Abnegation can’t possibly do sleepovers so does she even have the context to think boys are the bigger issue? She starts to cry and hides it, then one of the Candor boys starts to cry and doesn’t.
I feel disgust. Someone who looks so strong shouldn’t act so weak. Why can’t he just keep his crying quiet like the rest of us?
Yeah, it’s so much braver to hide the sound so no one knows.
Then chapter eight is about guns! The first thing they do is hand everyone one.
I shouldn’t be surprised that the Dauntless expect us to hit the ground running, but I anticipated more than six hours of rest before the running began.
It’s actually the only thing I’d expect if you stop to think about it. Having sleep deprived people play with guns is about as stupid as everything else they’ve done.
We’re also told that it’s possible to drastically improve your rank over time.” so she’ll start low and do something impressive to shoot up.
“We believe that preparation eradicates cowardice, which we define as the failure to act in the midst of fear,” says Four.
The words you make are entirely reasonable, so why is every action every one of you takes insane?
Stages go physical emotional mental, because drama likes clean boundaries like that.
“But what…” Peter yawns through his words. “What does firing a gun have to do with…bravery?”
Four flips the gun in his hand, presses the barrel to Peter’s forehead, and clicks a bullet into place. Peter freezes with his lips
parted, the yawn dead in his mouth.
“Wake. Up,” Four snaps. “You are holding a loaded gun, you idiot. Act like it.”
Yes this is the best way to criticize someone else’s gun safety practices. This faction should’ve gone extinct ages ago.
The bang is so loud it hurts my ears.
Yes, literally. So the Dauntless are all half deaf too?
My family would never approve of me firing a gun. They would say that guns are used for self-defense, if not violence, and therefore they are self-serving.
So there is nothing at all special about Abnegation they’re just the Puritan version of Amity, they believe any form of aggression including aggression in defense of self or others is terrible.
“Statistically speaking,” the Erudite boy next to me—his name is Will—says, grinning at me, “you should have hit the target at least once by now, even by accident.” He is blond, with shaggy hair and a crease between his eyebrows.
“Is that so,” I say without inflection.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think you’re actually defying nature.”
Aw, Erudite kids seem fun. I mean, that’s not even exactly an insult, he’s saying she’s doing something impressive in her failure.
She finally clips the target, and the Erudite-Dauntless celebrates the validity of statistics.
There is power in controlling something that can do so much damage
I can only assume this is because of the lack of sleep.
Anyway, they shoot until lunchtime, by which point they’ve all got repetative stress problems. Also, their hearing is already damaged. Just saying.
She angsts a bit about her being divergent and how it doesn’t seem to matter but what if years from now is suddenly does????????
Meanwhile we learn that the factions do share classes, thank god for small sanity. But seems Abnegation don’t get to make friends because they have to be quiet and anonymous. This also suggests all sorts of learning problems since they can never ask the teacher anything.
Christina says Mom used to say that politeness is deception in pretty packaging.” and Tris says that’s why their factions don’t get along too well for that reason even though I don’t see why Abnegation would have a problem with people pointing out their flaws, since being hurt isn’t being selfless. Anyway, the people Candor is busy hating are Amity.
Those who seek peace above all else, they say, will always deceive to keep the water calm.
Amity and Abnegation continue to not be good ideas to separate. In this case, it’d make sense for other factions to be suspicious of the community covering for one of their leaders being abusive – the abuse might violate their standards, but acknowledging it would lead to a worse upset. We could learn an important lesson about how niceness isn’t always goodness when it’s applied too universally.
An Erudite boy wants to sit with them and they demand to know why he doesn’t want to stick with the other Erudites and christ are they ever going to start defining themselves by their actual faction? Anyway it’s because the other two are a couple and she freaks out at how they kiss in public and her table explains it’s normal and how has she never seen couples kissing in public if every other faction is fine with it?
Then they make fun of how she’s “figid”. Of all the words to use, book.
Then punching bag time, so they can get used to throwing a punch before tomorrow when they’ll just spend their time punching each other.
Four touches her to give her advice on her form and the earth pauses for her.
“I’m surprised he didn’t break you in half,” she says. She wrinkles her nose. “He scares the hell out of me. It’s that quiet voice he uses.”
“Yeah. He’s…” I look over my shoulder at him. He is quiet, and remarkably self-possessed. But I wasn’t afraid that he would hurt me. “…definitely intimidating,” I finally say.
Definitely endgame material.
Anyway, now it’s free time. The boy who cried, Al, says he wants a tattoo.
“I just want to feel like I’ve actually left the old faction. Stop crying about it.” When we don’t respond,
…
“I think you’re right. We’re half in, half out right now. If we want all the way in, we should look the part.”
The biggest question is why no one seems interesting in pushing them all the way in. I guess it’s because the faction is hipster and doesn’t want them anyway.
Anyway, it’s makeover time, because Tris is wearing baggy clothes.
Ten minutes later I stand in front of a mirror in the clothing place wearing a knee-length black dress. The skirt isn’t full, but it isn’t stuck to my thighs, either—unlike the first one she picked out, which I refused. Goose bumps appear on my bare arms. She slips the tie from my hair and I shake it out of its braid so it hangs wavy over my shoulders.
What does any of this have to do with bravery? Especially when this faction seems to be mostly paramilitary?
I open my eyes and for the first time stare openly at my own reflection. My heart rate picks up as I do, like I am breaking the rules and will be scolded for it. It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.
BUT THEIR SYSTEM SHOULD BE BUILT FOR THIS! THIS IS EXACTLY WHY THEY WANT SO WHY IS NO ONE TRYING TO FORCE THIS INTO THE KIDS ALREADY?
Anyway, she likes the look because now she’s noticeable and this book can’t decide what the Dauntless are beyond wild.
We finally learn about money! At home, everyone gets the same clothes to make resource management easy, so presumably the factions each get a budget.
but everything is more varied at the Dauntless compound. Every Dauntless gets a certain amount of points to spend per month, and the dress costs one of them.
Also, their fiat currency doesn’t handle small purchases well if the smallest unit is a dress. But maybe anything less than that is just provided, like the dining hall. Come to think of it, that means they’re living more communally than Abnegation, who are just Puritans.
I wander around the room, looking at the artwork on the walls. These days, the only artists are in Amity. Abnegation sees art as impractical, and its appreciation as time that could be spent serving others, so though I have seen works of art in textbooks, I have never been in a decorated room before.
Art is happening in front of you, how can it be only Amity? Also, how does Abnegation not liking it translate to only one other faction liking it?
And she stumbles across the woman who administered her test, who’s apparently another tattoo artist when not covering up divergent test results. She tries to say she’d like to chat, alone, sometime, about that thing you know.
“I am not sure that would be wise,” she says quietly. “I helped you as much as I could, and now you will have to go it alone.”
Which in any other situation would sound like it’s saying don’t ask me to risk myself more for you, but Dauntless factioners should never see risk as the limiting factor, should they?
On the brighter side Tris resolves to get answers from her anyway, so at least she’s not giving up like so many protagonists. She also thinks about how if she got a tattoo it’d horrify her parents, then that it’s the least of the reasons they’d hate her, so…
“Three of these flying birds.”
I touch my collarbone, marking the path of their flight—toward my heart. One for each member of the family I left behind.
Although the general shape of things is absurder by the moment, this is a good capstone to Tris’ issues these last chapters about how she keeps thinking about how she’s disappointing her family. She’s accepting they’re gone by doing something she knows they won’t forgive, but she wants to remember them fondly.
I think the implication is not that the Dauntless kill their elderly, but that the pervasive lack of OSHA compliance weeds them out.
The author hasn’t thought through (or doesn’t know) that in our world, police and firefighters and such wear protective gear, so taking precautions might have a source other than cowardice.
That’s the implication, but where are the Abnegation making sure? What if someone gets old and just stops going out so they never die from breaking their hip navigating the trains? Abnegation and Amity should want to make sure no one’s chucking those people off buildings.
Off-topic: I assume you’ve seen Das lately? Because it’s the best thing ever.
I think my favorite part is the second chapter:
Farla: This thing I wrote isn’t very well-written
OP: YES IT IS YOU IDIOT GOD WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU YOU’RE SO STUPID
(Also, and this probably goes without saying, let’s not zergswarm this. If only because I want there to be more posts.)
It’s all so, so obvious this is someone who doesn’t read the category much. The first chapter is just a kludge of all the stuff I was seeing at the time, and the second chapter is trying to illustrate it isn’t giving new information so there’s no point to it.
I can’t wait to see what she’s so offended by in the injured pokemon chapter, and I hope that she’ll change her mind and spork Lucki too.
I just had a look at the latest chapter, and it’s pretty amazing how obvious that person can be.
They are an inspiration for grudgewankers everywhere.
Shoot. You know, I generally love Das Mervin’s sporkings? The original posters took apart Fifty Shades of Grey page by page, and it was wonderful. I suppose not everyone they host on their blog has the same standards.
I felt the same way. I love Das Mervin’s sporkings, but they’ve recently expanded and got, like, 12 new sporkers, and some of them really suck.
Like, this? This was just hateful. It was a sporker basically going, “How DARE you have an opinion of NT stories! I like those! You’re wrong when you say that they’re boring! Your opinion isn’t the only one that matters!”
Neither is yours.
It’s delicious grudgewank. I looked at their lj to see if they’d written anything and found them quoting a favorite fic that screwed up dialogue, capitalized pokemon, and had only passing familiarity with paragraphing.
The comments are even better, with gems like “why isn’t this completely over the top and useless as an example???????????? that’s how I write it therefore that is the one true wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy”
It’s probably partly differing standards. Some of their fanfic sporks seem very old school, where it was more about showing how much better you are than the other person and aggressively refusing to read it in a way that didn’t let you bash.
Yeah, it’s a little sad. I really respect Mervin and love her work. But, this was bound to happen with an open posting policy. At least it’s hilarious.
Everyone this is a precious delicate gift so please don’t touch it or we might not get more!
I propose Dauntless is renamed Fascism.
Fascism would be better organized. They’re like some unholy hybrid of the worst aspects of fascism and anarchy with a liberal dollop of stupid teenager. They even dress in a single color despite being all personal expression with the tattoos and jewelry.
They’re absolutely the peer pressure faction.
Also: what kind of wimpy Dauntless eat burgers with ketchup? They should be double-dog-daring one another to tackle the hottest peppers possible.
Yeah, hot peppers are southwestern, but if most of the food is GM anyway, get the Erudite to mod some jalapeños that will grow in the Midwest.
They should eat that fish which has a chance of killing you if cooked improperly.
Every day. Because you aren’t brave if not everything you do can kill you.
Gawd, yes! And Abnegation are either vegetarians (do not put self before the animals!) or take the organ meats so the other factions don’t have to. No selfish roast-chicken-eating!
If we’re going down the path of exaggeration (if!), let’s have the trainees be given only bunk beds, and they jockey for the top bunk because only cowards want the lower bunk. That’s the sort of thing the teens could plausibly do because they’re trying to prove how “into” Dauntless they are, with the Dauntless adults kind of rolling their eyes over it.
They should also be vegetarians just so they take up less resources. Dauntless should get the organ meats both for the dare factor and the fact they probably need a shitton of iron in their diet just to keep upright after all the blood loss.
But I’m increasingly certain Abnegation don’t give a shit about anything but looking like they’re selfless, so eating the blandest and most boring of foods makes sense.
That pufferfish? And they should eat raw fish all the time too, because cooking food to prevent parasites is for babies and Abnegation, dammit!
They have lemongrass, so either they can grow anything with the magic of science or the climate is now tropical. So either way, they should have no problem getting hot peppers and just eating them straight until their tastebuds melt. If you can still feel anything in your mouth, you’re not Dauntless.
Wisconsinite here.
We have local farmers who grow hot peppers and sell them at farmer’s markets. No idea if they are grown indoors in containers or not. But there’s no real reason chicago shouldn’t be able to.
Until I read the recaps and caught the chicken meal, I totally thought Tris was surprised because she’d never eaten meat before, which would have made sense, especially if the different factions get food resources and they’re trying to share everything with the factionless, they should be eating stuff like beans, rice, and peanut butter all the time.
The attempts at making everything a faction does relate to their virtue just make this whole thing so over the top and ridiculous. They can’t just be brave, they must be JUMPING OUT OF TRAINS AND OFF SEVEN-STORY BUILDINGS. They can’t just be selfless, they must be JOYLESS AND NEVER DRAW ATTENTION TO THEMSELVES UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVER.
I think that’s the point the book tries to make: that any trait becomes monstrous once taken to the extreme. But the way it goes about it just makes the whole society looks insane and impossible.
The real problem is this isn’t even bravery taken to an extreme, especially when they’re using fear as the stick to make everyone keep moving. Similarly the Abnegation don’t seem all that selfless. You could get bad things by exaggerating a trait beyond reason and telling people to never display any other traits, but the factions are fucked up in entirely different ways than they should be.
And so they gave weapons to people who confuse bravery with daredevil attitude and apparently didn’t even hear of discipline.
They also gave weapons to kids on their first day, after a stressful event and without much sleep afterwards. They are not yet dead how?
And they have a low recruitment rate! They should need every warm body they can get their hands on, even assuming that they aren’t seeing any casualties at all from their actual job.
Oh Al. I really really hate how the book handles this character. Also you’d think a person raised to be selfless and help people might have a little more compassion for someone crying on their first night away from home.
Nonsense that would get in the way of the author being proud of the fact she’s a total bitch, because if she had the usual Sue flaw of being clumsy then she’d be dead and I’d be saved the effort of explaining to all my friends who like this book and demand to know why I don’t why they’re brain dead.
And it would have been so easy to have Tris *want* to comfort Al but decide she can’t because she’s determined to prove she’s the most dauntless of Dauntless. Wouldn’t have changed the plot at all, but would have developed the character in a more realistic way.
Eh, it is the easy way. I’m glad that after so many chapters of Tris failing because she just doesn’t think to be selfless that she’s finally actually selfish.
Eh, the author doesn’t really seem proud that Tris has some seriously uncharitable tendencies. Tris goes on to do some shitty, yet understandable things in later chapters.
VAGUE SPOILERS:
She rationalizes not helping a friend in danger and doesn’t forgive another friend who turns on her. Very human, very realistic, very unlike your average YA protagonist. The author doesn’t give her a free pass. I liked it.
if she had the usual Sue flaw of being clumsy then she’d be dead
Actually in the first chapter she trips over her feet and explains she’s clumsy. So it’s exactly the usual flaw down to not having any real impact.
In fairness I can see her empathy just being broken – she was raised to always be selfless regardless of how she felt toward the other person, so all she feels seeing someone who needs help is another obligation. She never went through the period of empathizing and feeling for them and wanting to help.
I don’t know how much you know about gun safety, but this is absolutely appalling. The author has CLEARLY never touched a gun in her life, because every responsible gun owner in the world must be gnashing their teeth as they read this.
That’s because they’re COWARDS not like the Dauntless who have no fear of accidentally shooting anyone, including themselves!
Safety = COWARDS!!!!!!!!
If there are barbarians with more than one personality trait (tribes of athletic academics! Fun loving, self sacrificing scientists!) waiting beyond the gates how the hell are these lunatics even able to fend them off?
Having never read the book, just from your reviews, I dare say Four is Marcus’ son, whose daddy is in fact a saint.
On the note of gun safety, I don’t know a whole lot about guns, but while in Israel around age 14 I entered this junior military camp for teens for a week. All week long we were trained in the building, handling, loading and dismantling of M-16’s before getting to shoot them on the last day. I assumed this is pretty standard procedure when teaching kids to handle guns. Why is there not even a word about gun safety?
This really isn’t the bravery faction – it’s the recklessness faction. How does it not enter your mind to have basic safety precautions? /Come on./
BRAVERY AND SAFETY SHARE ONLY THREE LETTERS THEREFORE THEY ARE OPPOSITES AND SAFETY IS FOR WUSSES AND ABNEGATION!!!!!! OUR MORTALITY RATE JUST PROVES WE’VE THE BEST FACTION!!!!!!!!
Ha. When I first read Divergent I enjoyed it (or, at least, tolerated it), though I knew it was far from perfect. Now, reading this, the thing that really stands out to me is how Tris keeps bringing up the differences between Abnegation and Dauntless. It’s really annoying. I mean, Abnegation frowns upon the most ridiculous things — they can’t look in mirrors, they can’t exercise, they can’t have birthdays, they can’t ask questions … How do the Abnegation handle it? How do they enjoy themselves?
(And yes, I do wholeheartedly agree that the faction system doesn’t make any sense, and I am also wondering why Amity and Abnegation are separate factions.)
Oh, and another thing: I read a super condensed description of communism, and now I think of Abnegation as the “communist faction.” It makes sense… kinda.
Isn’t the whole society communist, though? Well, since Abnegation are the ones running it, I guess that makes sense…
Yeah but the Abnegation are the most extreme about it I guess.
Not in any of the power-to-the-worker senses, or even the even distribution sense. The closest we get is that to each according to need would explain why Dauntless gets first pick of food, since they actually need higher calories than most of the other factions. A communist society can’t also have a institutionalized underclass and it’s based around the idea everyone’s fundamentally the same, which is the polar opposite from splitting everyone up because we’ve fundamentally different.
They even hate progress while most communist setups put a premium on public works and scientific improvements. The only thing that’s really a connection is that distribution and work don’t seem closely linked. It’s really like a secular theocracy, if that makes any sense.
Hm, yeah. I guess I meant mostly in the according to need/according to ability sense and the fact that they certainly don’t appear to be in *any* sense capitalist. It’s obviously lacking most of the good things about communism.
Secular theocracy… Hm. So, like an over-sized secular cult, basically? That’s not a bad description.
Hm, yeah, a weird mix of communism among their own members + religious outlook in dealing with other factions.
I tend to think of them more as Puritans or, really, a ramped up version of Jehovah’s Witnesses but without the structure of an actual religion.
“Also, Dauntless will produce twelve total factionless in return for ten faction members. The failure rate is over fifty percent. And this for a faction that must have a criminally high mortality rate.”
They must be a tiny faction, especially as I can’t imagine that they enjoy a long lifespan, at least not as Dauntless.
It also seems like a bad idea to have cuts based on numbers rather than who’s not up to scratch by the end of each stage.
Even if the author wanted to keep the number of characters to a manageable level, it might have worked if, rather than having two groups for the first stage, they had enough initiates for five or six groups of nine or ten kids, trained and ranked separately in the early stages, with no fixed number of kids to be cut at the end. It could be a case that, in theory, everybody can pass initiation but it’s never happened before and the pass rate fluctuates from year to year.
Nobody would be able to be sure that they were safe or doomed if they only know where they are ranked within their own group; for all they know, the best in their group is on a level with the worst in another group, or vice versa. Maybe twenty kids won’t make the grade at the end of Stage One. Maybe only two will be cut.
They could still keep the bit about choosing jobs in order of rank for an added incentive to strive for the top spot.
it might have worked if, rather than having two groups for the first stage, they had enough initiates for five or six groups of nine or ten kids, trained and ranked separately in the early stages
Yes, that’d have been perfect! It’d prevent anyone from getting complacent and made it less obvious who was going to be cut, and it even makes stabbing the top guy less of a good move because objective measurement means that if you’re out you’re still out. And knowing the total groups were huge could really increase the pressure on Tris initially, followed by increasing the resentment when they hear that Tris’ fear sim time is the lowest of all the groups combined.
Objective measurement would also give another possible motive for Al to join in attacking Tris when she’s topping the charts in the second stage of training.
If only ten out of sixteen initiates will become members, taking out the top initiate isn’t going to save the guy who is ranked last from factionlessness. However, if we had a situation where Al had reason to believe that Tris had figured out a way to work through the fear sims several times faster than average, he (and her other friends) could be angry with her for not sharing the secret of her success, especially if them doing better isn’t going to hurt her chances of being accepted.
Hm. You know, if they didn’t clearly explain how they did it, you could have the kids worried it was on a curve and Tris was messing things up for the rest of them by doing so well without giving them any help to catch up. The Dauntless don’t seem interested in giving people enough information to know what’s going on, so they might even think the misunderstandings were funny.
Given that at least some of the kids were caught off guard by the scoring system for their first stage rankings, it’d make sense for them to worry that it wouldn’t be a case of having a cut-off point based on fear sim times. If they either score on a curve or only accept kids who are no more than X number of minutes behind the initiate with the lowest time, Tris doing so much better could be seen as a threat to their chances.
Al could be especially wary of any twists in the scoring, given that he came very close to being cut in the first stage. He believed that as he beat Will in the first fight, he’d scrape through even if he never won another fight. Had he known that he’d lose points for every loss to a lower-ranked opponent, he might have tried to force himself to win at least some fights.
Hm. What if what it’s really about is how fast you improve? The first test is all about ibeating someone who started off better than you, and the second could be about beating yourself. In that case Tris would only be scoring decently despite her short time, because she already started off so good at it. And in that case, they might think she wouldn’t tell them the trick because it’d improve their own rank much more than her own.
That’d be quite workable, especially as there’s no plot-related reason for it to be essential for Tris to be first in her class. It’s not like she gets a chance to pick a job. Beating Peter and being the highest ranked transfer are doable if she is second, third or fourth.
It’d also deepen her friends’ resentment if they think she’s concealing a technique for conquering simulations faster if there’s no risk to Tris’ rank. A combination of general improvement and beating a higher-ranked opponent go Tris to sixth place in the first stage rankings but first place went to Edward, who started out the best and stayed the best. If they assume that the second stage might be scored along the same lines, Tris is in a similar position to Edward but would appear to be denying her friends information that would bring their ranks closer to hers, even if they’re not likely to beat her.
Given that it’s only in the first stage that improvement counts for anything, I wonder if, contrary to what was said about transfers and Dauntless-born being ranked alike, only the transfers’ scores were weighted in favour of those who improve. If Dauntless kids are taught to fight, shoot, throw knives, etc, from an early age, it’d make sense for them to be held to a different standard to kids who are starting from scratch but who may show significant improvement during their ten days or so of training. If so, it’s a plausible reason to train them separately for the first stage of training.
Dauntless places the least weight on the physical aspect of training when it comes to ranking initiates and choosing members, which makes the cutting of a set number at the end of the first stage silly. It’d make more sense to have a minimum standard for the first stage, for Dauntless born initiates to reach and for transfers to either reach or show that they have the potential to reach it, and then to use the mental and emotional stages to rank them.
“You will notice that there are ten beds and only nine of you. We anticipated that a higher proportion of you would make it this far.”
“But we started with twelve,” protests Christina.”
Did they lose an extra kid somewhere?
They lost two transfers en route to Dauntless headquarters; the Erudite boy who couldn’t make it onto the train and the Amity boy who wouldn’t get off the train, plus a Dauntless girl who was killed by the jump to the roof.
What happened to the third transfer?
I assume they missed the train too?