Last time on divergence really doesn’t seem to matter, the Dauntless are full of contradictions I don’t think were intended.

This time, Tris finds out that she doesn’t have to fight at all today because they’re supposed to pair up and she’s #9.

The knot in my stomach unravels. A reprieve.

Tris continues to be stupid. When she fights tomorrow, everyone else will have had practice.

Her friend then complains she’s up against Molly, who she refers to as the Tank and Peter’s slightly more feminine-looking minion, and Tris chimes in to tell us Molly has an ugly nose. None of you are going to have pretty noses for long, you know.

On the other hand, Tris tells us that Christina shielded me from the rest of the dormitory as I changed and it’s really nice to see considerate characters.

Apparently Peter, Drew and Molly have been buddies all their life. I wonder how often it happens that kids jump ship in groups? Not only would kids with shared tendencies want to join up, but at sixteen, they could just want to stay with their friends even if the faction isn’t their first choice. A kid who doesn’t fit in in their home faction and has to leave their family might go out of their way to keep people they know around.

“Peter is pure evil. When we were kids, he would pick fights with people from other factions and then, when an adult came to break it up, he’d cry and make up some story about how the other kid started it. And of course, they believed him, because we were Candor and we couldn’t lie. Ha ha.”

And what happened when you told the truth, Christina? Because you couldn’t lie either.

This suggests the factions are just bizarre stereotypes and no one actually pays attention to their actions because “everyone knows” X group is Y, even when they don’t fit the stereotype. White people forage, black people loot, Jewish people cackle over money while drinking the blood of our blondest Christian babies.

You’d think Candor would have the least tolerance for this shit of any of them, especially when they’re raising the kids. You don’t teach kids to tell the truth by believing anything they tell you.

I think the problem is the author’s made two factions that can’t even use self-defense and one faction that doesn’t care why you’re fighting, so only Candor or Erudite could pick fights like this at all.

Tris worries the group of evil kids knows they’re gossiping.

“So? They already know I hate them.”
“They do? How?”

Tris is really stupid and I wish Erudite Tris would return. Then she feels bad because gossiping is “self-indulgent” and not “mean” or any other adjective you’d expect attached. I’m thinking Abnegation may have originally been the selfless-in-the-sense-of-no-self-indulgence faction and the virtue being non-selfishness came second. They really seem so much more against personal enjoyment than helping others.

The Christina explains that she told the Candor kids and that in Candor people tell each other their feelings honestly all the time, in case the reader is stupid like Tris.

Tris says that Abnegation doesn’t want to hurt people, and Christina says Candor feels it’s helping.

“It ends when one of you is unable to continue,” says Eric.
“According to Dauntless rules,” Four says, “one of you could also concede.”
Eric narrows his eyes at Four. “According to the old rules,” he says. “In the new rules, no one concedes.”
“A brave man acknowledges the strength of others,” Four replies.
“A brave man never surrenders.”

Okay, so maybe Dauntless isn’t actually insane, it’s just taken a bad turn in recent years.

Al tries to argue that he doesn’t want to fight, and Will decides fuck that, how dare you suggest I can’t win just because you’re a million times better at this? Al knocks him out.

Have you ever noticed there are not a lot of retired boxers who set out to have a new career as physicists? It’s because this shit is not good for the brain. It’s particularly bad when it’s repeated before the brain finishes healing the damage from last time. And they’re apparently fighting until knockout every day.

“Get him up,” Eric says. He stares with greedy eyes at Will’s fallen body, like the sight is a meal and he hasn’t eaten in weeks.

I guess we can assume this all is new, so the reason Eric and Four can string together complete sentences is because they didn’t go through this absurdity. But if this is all Eric just wanting suffering porn, how did he manage to talk everyone else into it?

Christina kicks Molly in the side. Molly gasps and grits her teeth like she’s about to growl through them. A lock of stringy black hair falls across her face

I wish beauty and goodness weren’t always together.

What follows is a suitably horrible fight where Molly brutalizes Christina. Christina tries to crawl away and Molly starts kicking her, so she gives up and Eric flips out. He drags her to the one railing in the entire Dauntless HQ and tells her to go over it.

“If you can hang over the chasm for five minutes, I will forget your cowardice. If you can’t, I will not allow you to continue initiation.”

There is no way the faction could sustain this sort of thing, and it doesn’t make sense for it to be a new thing because they should have codified their original way with the knowledge you need to avoid this shit.

But instead it’s more stupid Tris:

For the first minute and a half, Christina is fine. Her hands stay firm around the railing and her arms don’t shake. I start to think she might make it and show Eric how foolish he was to doubt her.

That has nothing to do with it!

He didn’t dare her to dangle over the chasm. He said she needed to stay there five minutes in the hopes her arms would give out. Moreover, you know he’s just sadistic! You just observed him being sadistic! Why are you acting as though he’s doubting anyone?

Proving my point, she gets hit by a splash of river and slips so she’s dangling by her fingertips.

While Tris is agonizing over whether she should help because she’s sure helping will get her exiled even though there’s no way you could argue that showed cowardice. Al, proving he’s the only one who’s actually Dauntless, starts calling encouragement to Christina, and Tris very belatedly joins in. Another minute passes and Christina’s made it, so Al heads over to pull her up.

“No,” Eric says. “She has to do it on her own.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Al growls. “She did what you said. She’s not a coward. She did what you said.”
Eric doesn’t respond. Al reaches over the railing

And again, only after Al has acted does Tris finally manage to run forward and try to help. Some Dauntless you are.

But Eric didn’t manage to kill any of them yet, so that’s a win. And maybe Tris will realize she’s failing as a Dauntless and try harder.

Let’s go to the tenth chapter! We’re now a fourth of the way through the book.

THAT NIGHT I dream that Christina hangs from the railing again, by her toes this time, and someone shouts that only someone who is Divergent can help her. So I run forward to pull her up, but someone shoves me over the edge, and I wake before I hit the rocks.

That’s…not inspiring. I’d have expected the nightmare to be about Christina hanging and Tris doing nothing and this time she falls, or when the voice says only a Divergent can she freezes up because she doesn’t want anyone to know. Her failure to help her friend because she was afraid seems like the most important part of this.

She could also have a nightmare about Eric telling her to do the same thing because she’s divergent and has to prove she’s Dauntless, and she slips down further and further and no one saves her.

It just feels like the book keeps remembering the divergent thing is supposed to be a big deal, even though the fact the Dauntless are all insane is so much more significant.

Anyway, she wakes up and goes into the bathroom to wash and put on her clothes in private.

the word “Stiff” is spray-painted across my mattress in red. The word is written smaller along the bed frame, and again on my pillow.

Even though Stiff seems like it’s just a rude term and not a horrible slur, and she hasn’t reacted to it any other time, suddenly this is hugely offensive. Peter obviously did it and she points out that they’re in the same faction, and he points out that he’s going to make sure she’s not.

Al helps her clean it up and advises to pretend she doesn’t get mad so Peter will get bored. He also expresses he’s upset about hurting Will. That reluctance might be what they’re trying to beat out of the kids, since it’s a kind of fear, but like every other crazy thing about Dauntless, it’s also a completely valid point because he has no reason to want to hurt anyone right now either.

Anyway, next day they set her against Peter the alpha evil. Al suggests she fake unconsciousness, but I doubt that’ll work because Peter will just keep kicking her.

My cheeks feel hot. Al and Christina are just trying to help, but the fact that they don’t believe, not even in a tiny corner of their minds, that I have a chance against Peter bothers me.

They’re really not saying that.

It’s possible they’re thinking that, but what they’re saying is just that this is going to be painful and horrible and your best bet is to avoid it. Unless you mean “a chance to take him out in one or two blows while ninjadodging his punches”.

Also you just saw what happened to Will when he got offended by the idea he couldn’t kick ass. Having an enormous ego isn’t bravery.

Peter then beats the shit out of her.

I hear ringing and try to blink some of the black patches out of my eyes; how did something get in my eye?
Out of my peripheral vision, I see Four shove the door open and walk out. Apparently this fight isn’t interesting enough for him.

The fight scenes continue to be quite good but she’s way too coherent, and it’s most evident here with her jumping between her eyes glitching out on her to saying she not only still has peripheral vision (between blood loss, exertion and general shock, I’d expect tunnel vision) but enough to identify someone and watch them do something, as well as the ability to pay attention to it.

Part of this is that she needs to stay coherent enough to tell us what’s happening, but that doesn’t excuse the second bit. The book should have had Christina telling her that partway through the fight Four walks off, probably because the asshole got bored even though it’s really because he secretly loves her.

But shortly after her eyes just give out and she starts screaming as he continues to beat her, and someone calls the fight off while she faints, and when she wakes up apparently she’s on painkillers. Why do Dauntless even have those? Of all the good ideas they’d hate for not fitting their faction, painkillers are some of the more reasonable ones.

I’ve never seen a nurse with so many piercings in her ear before. Some Dauntless must volunteer to do jobs that traditionally belong to other factions. After all, it wouldn’t make sense for the Dauntless to make the trek to the city hospital every time they get hurt.

It seems way more reasonable to just employ the other faction there, or to have their headquarters next to the hospital – like hospitals, it’s good to have your police force in a central location so they can respond better.

My guess is that the Dauntless with piercings try to get jobs that won’t destroy their piercings.

She has a quick flashback to her first hospital visit when her mom broke an arm falling on the sidewalk (?). The hospitals are staffed by Amity because who needs doctors and nurses who know that fancy book learning?

I remember Caleb telling her that it would only take a month to mend, because it was a hairline fracture. I thought he was reassuring her, because that’s what selfless people do, but now I wonder if he was repeating something he had studied; if all his Abnegation tendencies were just Erudite traits in disguise.

I’m hoping the idea here is that traits overlap – that you can think knowing stuff will help you help people.

It’s dinnertime.

Christina and Will get up, but Al waves them ahead. He has a distinct smell—sweet and fresh, like sage and lemongrass.

No he doesn’t unless they let him bring his special sage and lemongrass perfume. Also, you don’t know what that smells like. You didn’t recognize hamburgers or their component parts of beef or ketchup, no way in hell do you know sage, let alone lemongrass. Where the fuck are any of you even getting lemongrass from? YOU LIVE IN CHICAGO WHICH IS A FROZEN HELLHOLE. Do you have any idea hard it is to find lemongrass even when you’re not living in a walled city in a frozen hellhole? You don’t even have the lake next to you to help moderate temperatures!

Al tells her that they’re going out tomorrow to learn about what the Dauntless’ actual jobs are. Since this was suggested by Eric, presumably there are zombies outside the fence and their next initiation will involve shoving them over it and seeing who makes it back unbitten. Then he stammers out that she doesn’t look too bad, which isn’t to say she doesn’t usually look good, uh…

I hope I am wrong. I could not be attracted to Al—I could not be attracted to anyone that fragile.

Well then. I’d have liked this more if we didn’t have an endgame OTP going, but it’s pretty okay regardless.

She asks if the fighting’s getting easier.

“I lost to Drew. After your fight with Peter.” He looks at me. “I took a few hits, fell down, and stayed there. Even though I didn’t have to. I figure…I figure that since I beat Will, if I lose all the rest, I won’t be ranked last, but I won’t have to hurt anyone anymore.”
“Is that really what you want?”
He looks down. “I just can’t do it. Maybe that means I’m a coward.”
“You’re not a coward just because you don’t want to hurt people,” I say, because I know it’s the right thing to say, even if I’m not sure I mean it.

It is an interesting question.

The kids are getting pulled in different directions over fear – so much I feel like taking away the threat of being factionless would help Dauntless, because they shouldn’t want people doing stuff out of fear like this. What Al’s doing does seem somewhat cowardly at first pass but it doesn’t seem like it on examination – he’s not saying he can’t or wouldn’t if it was necessary, but that it isn’t so he’s not going to. I’m not sure why he feels all that matters is avoiding last place, though – only half the kids will stay.

If he is a coward, it isn’t because he doesn’t enjoy pain.
It is because he refuses to act.

That means what, exactly? What’s the distinction?

And it’s a particularly odd accusation when he’s the only one of you who was willing to act when it actually mattered. He didn’t pull Christina up early, but that doesn’t even have to have been cowardice – there’s a very good chance that if someone interfered Antag-Eric would’ve failed Christina even if he didn’t fail the other person.

Like I just said, he also didn’t say he’s made a decision not to do it at all, let alone that he feels he can’t. He’s saying he doesn’t have to and presumably if he did have to he’d start fighting.

But anyway. He asks her if she thinks their families will come because like her, he’s heard they don’t. She doesn’t know.

In less than a week, the Abnegation initiates will be able to visit their families for the first time since the Choosing Ceremony.
They will go home and sit in their living rooms and interact with their parents for the first time as adults. I used to look forward to that day. I used to think about what I would say to my mother and father when I was allowed to ask them questions at the dinner table.

This seems more Puritan stuff, but the author made it clear Abnegation wasn’t a children should be seen and not heard faction. If she wanted to ask questions, she just had to wait until after dinner. If the idea is that neither side of the family is every allowed to question the other or reference things they said earlier, just monologue about a subject, then Abnegation is fucked up in a way that seems unrelated to selfishness/selflessness.

She imagines the Dauntless reunions involve throwing knives at each other. They probably do.

And the transfer initiates with forgiving parents will be able to see them again too. I suspect mine will not be among them. Not after my father’s cry of outrage at the ceremony. Not after both their children left them.

Like I said, Abnegation should be the best one at sucking it up and continuing on. Especially since they seem to think it’s more important to be selfless at other factions, so now that their kid is a non-faction member, they should have to put her feelings above their own.

Really the only issue is that her brother’s in another faction, so they’d have to pick who to visit or split up. That’s probably a really rare occurrence – even with Abnegation’s oddly close siblings, we’re told they don’t usually leave at all so as long as the rest of the factions don’t do the same thing, it should almost never come up.

She considers that she could have told them the truth and they might have helped her.

But I didn’t trust them with that secret, so I will never know.
I clench my teeth as the tears come. I am fed up. I am fed up with tears and weakness.

I’d hope these two lines are connected – that she’s rejecting the weakness that put her in this position in the first place by being too scared to talk to anyone. But I’m not sure.

Proving she’s totally Dauntless, she sneaks out of the hospital in the middle of the night to go back to her own bed.

The only thing worse than letting Peter put me in the hospital would be letting him put me there overnight.

You’ll fit right in with the rest of the suicidal nutjobs, Tris.