Last time, they reached Amity. Come to think of it, Candor was probably the better bet. They’d care a lot about the truth of what happened and they’re capable of defending themselves.

Today we find out that, while it calmed her down and knocked her out, it failed to live up to the no nightmare part and she dreamed of yesterday.

For a moment I see Will standing before me, both our guns between us—his hand, I could have shot his hand, why didn’t I, why?—and I almost scream his name.
Then he’s gone.

I’m torn. On the one hand, this is indeed the issue she should be torn up about. On the other, well, why didn’t she? It was presented as her moment of cool determination, not an act of rage or panic. Anyway, this prompts her to abandon the gun under her mattress, which may in turn affect the plot.

On it is the simulation data that controlled the Dauntless, and the record of what the Erudite did. It feels too important for me to even touch, but I can’t leave it here, so I grab it and wedge it between the dresser and the wall. Part of me thinks it would be a good idea to destroy it, but I know it contains the only record of my parents’ deaths, so I’ll settle for keeping it hidden.

This seems increasingly confused.

The Erudite must have left a perfectly good trail of evidence, especially when they can’t possibly have expected to need to cover it up. In addition, if we accept that the Dauntless were hijacked, which should be very plausible given the chaos after she turned the simulation off, only Erudite could possibly have done it.

Furthermore, the Dauntless are the only group that’s armed, so it’s not like they have to worry too much about getting rounded up and arrested before they can explain. The biggest issue is that they themselves don’t know, and since they know they suddenly realized what they were doing in a way that perfectly matches Tris and Tobias’ explanation, I don’t think they’ll be demanding exhaustive proof before they accept they weren’t choosing to murder their way through Abnegation.

Why on earth it’d be a good idea to destroy, though, is even more confusing. And while in the event it was meaningless, keeping it around to remember her parents might make sense, apparently there’s some really good reason it should be destroyed which makes keeping it for purely sentimental reasons pretty weird.

I have the sinking feeling I’m about to get a plot about how having the data endangers Tris in some way because Erudite wants to cover it up or something, but they’ve wanted her dead since a few chapters into the previous book, then she fucked up their brilliant takeover plan. They’re already max motivation here, no matter how important the proof of the thing there’s already ample other proof of is they just can’t possibly be gunning more for Tris than they already are.

Tobias appears to tell her the Amity are going to decide what to do.

I shake my head. “Never thought my fate would be in the hands of a bunch of Amity.”

While the Dauntless/Amity conflict makes a lot of sense, Tris herself never experienced any of that, which means her reflexive dismissal of them, much like saying only they would be so foolish as not to lock their doors, must be an Abnegation belief. Abnegation are assholes.

Although apparently completely boring ones. Tobias calls her Beatrice and she says save it for special occasions, then when she starts to list holidays realizes she only knows Abnegation ones, having not been at Dauntless long enough to celebrate anything but her initiation.

Separate holidays suggest that, by design or accident, the factions really were pushed to diverge quickly. It makes sense that such different groups would have different values, but apparently their only shared culture is the initiation and choosing, and of course everyone’s initiation is still run separately. They have no holidays focusing on their shared city. The unified choosing day is the closest they get to coming together for the sake of their shared beliefs, and I’m pretty sure that’s only happening because they have to do it together to allow kids to pick a faction.

She’s silently sad about Will and they cuddle.

For a moment all I can think is, How could you possibly know? But something about his expression reminds me that he does know something about loss. He lost his mother when he was young. I don’t remember how she died, just that we attended her funeral.

Yes you do, you said she died in childbirth. Also, he did spend a few years in the random murder faction. You shouldn’t need to be explicitly told, as we were, that he’s been watching divergent friends die off. Dauntless is just generally psychotic and he seemed to believe Eric was going for blood with them, which means he probably saw other people get cut up or killed while he couldn’t do anything about it either. All of that is probably a lot more relevant to having to shoot innocent people to save other innocent people than his mom dying.

Anyway, she goes to get a shower, which is plain like everything else. I wonder if it’s that the author really likes plain and boring groups and now that she’s killed off Abnegation she has to get her featureless miseryhole scenery from somewhere new.

A sign on the back wall says REMEMBER: TO CONSERVE RESOURCES, SHOWERS RUN FOR ONLY FIVE MINUTES.

And it’s not a particularly warm five minutes, either. So Amity are the only ones who seem to understand the concept of resource management (and denial of basic pleasures), which you’d think Abnegation would really appreciate but no, apparently Tris was taught they’re a pack of fools.

Also, the only sign resources aren’t infinite! We’re seen some suggestion that food may be limited, but that could also have been Abnegation just fucking with people to make a point. What resources are being conserved here, though? Are they trying to use minimal energy, and the issue is hot water? It seems unlikely water itself is the problem given there’s a lake nearby and it’s a watershed lake, not something fed by an underground spring. Okay, it’s a “marsh” with zero plants now, but marshes are still pretty wet areas. Plus if water is a consideration, they must be watering their crops, and they’d just use the shower water for that.

I suspect there may be no more to this than that the author knows environmentalists say not to waste water.

Anyway, she finds clothes left for her, a mix of Amity bright flower colors and Abnegation dull, and she thinks it’s Abnegation who left them for her because It’s something they would think to do. but Amity seems similarly hyperconsiderate with being willing to greet people based on their own culture rather than imposing your own.

And there’s no mention by Tris of the incredible overlap in behaviors. After she gets dressed, Susan from Abnegation comes to bring her food, but she doesn’t tell us if this is Abnegation willingly taking on chores Amity would otherwise do or if Amity thinks people will wander around naked to get their clothes and into the dining hall for food because they’re all free love hippies.

I search her face for a sign of what she has lost—her father, an Abnegation leader, didn’t survive the attack—but I see only the placid determination characteristic of my old faction.

But given that’s the culture it doesn’t actually mean she has no feelings, just that she isn’t showing them to outsiders when she has work to do for them.

I sit down on a stool in front of the mirror, and she stands behind me, her eyes dutifully trained on the task at hand rather than her reflection. They do not lift, not even for an instant, as she runs a comb through my hair. And she doesn’t ask about my shoulder, how I was shot, what happened when I left the Abnegation safe house to stop the simulation. I get the sense that if I were to whittle her down to her core, she would be Abnegation all the way through.

Or she’s been through a lot and is taking refuge in rote. The fact she’s not asking about your shoulder even to ask how you are doesn’t seem particularly Abnegation at all.

Refusing to consider this, Tris feels it’s a good time to ask if Susan has seen her Abnegation-abandoning brother.

“Briefly, last night,” she says. “I left him to grieve with his faction as I grieve with mine. It is nice to see him again, though.”

And still, Tris doesn’t seem to consider that Susan is being remote because she views Tris as similarly not-her-faction. Last book she explained that Abnegation aren’t quite as closed off and unemotional as they seem to outsiders, it’s just they only relax in their own faction, and here Susan is behaving as they behaved towards outsiders last book.

“It’s a shame this happened when it did,” Susan says. “Our leaders were about to do something wonderful.”

So Abnegation really is evil? Because “something wonderful” with no details never goes well. If Erudite was just preempting Abnegation’s attempt to wipe them out, that’d explain why they were in such a rush and why they were vindictive enough to want to kill all the leaders. Doesn’t fit wit anything actually said last book for their reasons, though, so maybe they weren’t aware and it was just a coincidence. I guess if you have enough evil factions they’ll start canceling each other out.

Tris agrees with me that “something wonderful” is sketchy as fuck, but since she’s never shown much genre-savvy, I wonder if it’s just Abnegation has a generally negative view of things to go with their hatred for prosperity and progress.

Susan braids her hair up nicely but then Tris has another episode, this time about how her mom’s dead and will never braid her hair again, so she unbraids it and cuts it all off.

“Does everyone know you’re Marcus’s son?” Caleb says. “The Abnegation, I mean?”

Caleb you were brought up Abnegation and hadn’t a clue. Why are you asking this.

Conversely, given the small size of the group, all the adults should know him, even if he didn’t appear much. The only way they wouldn’t is if he really bulked up in Dauntless, but given their chicken and pea diet, they should be getting plenty of calories in Abnegation as well and have similar sizes. The Dauntless would be more muscular, but the Abnegation shouldn’t use that to recognize people in the first place because they wear baggy clothes. Dauntless have different posture and behavior, which might through people off a bit, except they know that Marcus’ kid went into Dauntless and would be expecting it.

But Tobias says no, their faction of maybe two hundred people has no idea he’s the son of their most popular member and let’s keep it that way. Caleb lampshades the absurdity by saying you can just look at the two and see the relation, then tries to change the subject by saying omg how dare an eighteen year old hit on my baby sister. Because when I think of people deeply concerned about minor age differences in teen relationships, I think sixteen year old boys.

They head into the greenhouse where the Amity are meeting. The greenhouse is apparently all hydroponics, including a giant tree of unknown species. I’d be much more impressed if we knew what kind it was, because some trees grow in water naturally.

I should not be surprised— the Amity spend their lives accomplishing feats of agriculture like this one, with the help of Erudite technology.

But how would you know if it’s an amazing feat for all you know that’s a mangrove tree.

Also, still another notch for Erudite not needing to kill off Abnegation. Apparently they’re on great terms with Amity as well as Dauntless and Candor, while Abnegation probably hasn’t made any friends by their twin pronged strategy of hating all happiness and thinking the other factions are scum.

I learned in Faction History that the Amity recognize no official leader—they vote on everything, and the result is usually close to unanimous. They are like many parts of a single mind, and Johanna is their mouthpiece.

So she actually learned stuff in that class!

I guess this is why choosing the CHEESE FOR THE CHEESE GOD faction isn’t so great either. You have to go along with the consensus, and presumably can’t even argue too hard for your version. We’re now left with Candor as the only sane choice. I really hope we don’t learn they ritually eat kittens or something.

This may also be our answer for why neither of the two kindness groups will take in factionless. They don’t have any real mechanisms to deal with people who don’t go along with the group, so they have to be picky about who they let in.

It’s a shame these books aren’t just about that paradox. The interactions between the factions and how they maintain themselves are the only original part of the world.

Indeed, we have the Amity then begin to discuss the central question they face:

How will we conduct ourselves in this time of conflict as people who pursue peace?”

And it suggests the true weakness of the faction system is that they’re simultaneously supposed to be the single answer to the problems they face and something that works together as a piece of a whole. The Amity have never had their answer stress-tested, because the Dauntless were always there to cover the conflict side. They interacted with Dauntless every time they entered or left the city and never did anything to try to remove that connection between their groups. They never created their own solution.

If they were aware they relied on Dauntless for protection and the ability to keep running their own faction without being attacked by others, maybe this question wouldn’t be so out of left field. They’d know that, while distasteful, conflict has its place for the moment. They likely wouldn’t be particularly good at it, but they’d be willing.

If they refused the idea of relying on Dauntless and rejected the idea conflict was ever necessary, they’d have their own solutions ready. Whether or not they’d work is another thing – the faction system could easily have led to a system where every group has its contingencies ready but few have actually tested them.

Two women in yellow dresses a few feet away rise and join a trio of men. A young man shifts so that his small circle becomes a large one with the group next to him. All around the room, the smaller crowds grow and expand, and fewer and fewer voices fill the room, until there are only three or four.

Tobias thinks it’s beautiful how they have such a democratic government. I guess when you’ve been dealing with nothing but top-down orders, it’s easier to miss that being convincing has a lot to do with charisma over being right. The basic idea is sound, but the speed it’s happening means this is going to be mostly down to the skill of the speaker, not the facts.

Tris objects, though hers is from a different angle:

“Sure, it works for the Amity. But what happens when not everyone wants to strum banjos and grow crops? What happens when someone does something terrible and talking about it can’t solve the problem?”

Considering how unnaturally fast the discussion is going, I think they have a no true Scotsman setup. If your group doesn’t keep progressing into bigger ones, if you aren’t on board with the final consensus, you’re not Amity and they kick you out, therefore Amity are always unanimous. They don’t even need to worry much about enforcing it. As far as we’ve seen, factions police themselves and mete out punishments, but once someone’s factionless they’re the Dauntless’ problem.

It probably doesn’t come up often, since with that hanging over your head and existing social pressure that you’re simply a bad person for objecting too hard, a lot of wht they’re looking at here is probably just based on the flow of the group – when group combines with another, the other groups start to feel they should as well, and no one wants to be the last uncombined group. And this means things will be even more affected by people’s personalities – stronger-willed people can play chicken, betting the other person will give up just so they can move on.

I expect them to address the rest of us, but instead they stand in a circle with Johanna and the other spokespeople and talk quietly.

Wait, I thought Johanna was the mouthpiece of the group. Now there’s a bunch?

Also further illustrating this is a shitty way of governing, they apparently did so without actually asking what happened to get all the information. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be the Amity being as fucked up as the Dauntless in perverting their original ideas or if the author just doesn’t realize quite how bad this looks. I’m not even sure they’ve announced that the Dauntless were mindcontrolled.

“Our faction has had a close relationship with Erudite for as long as any of us can remember. We need each other to survive, and we have always cooperated with each other,” says Johanna. “But we have also had a strong relationship with Abnegation in the past, and we do not think it is right to revoke the hand of friendship when it has for so long been extended.”

And that’s why the fact Erudite can take over groups is really important. What they did should be the greatest taboo, the revoking of faction choice and the destruction of faction ideals. It might have been possible to rationalize if they’d only taken over the Dauntless, because the Dauntless are meant to be used to attack people and they just changed who the Dauntless attacked. But they were not only murdering the Abnegation but planned to mindcontrol the surviviors into their army, despite the fact Abnegation’s faction rules forbid them from harming others.

That said, I’d like to point out that maybe if Abnegation hadn’t viewed Amity as hippie scum, Amity would be more willing to support the faction that has basically identical goals.

Anyway, therefore Amity wants to stay neutral, despite the fact the mindcontrol option Erudite has means there can be no neutrality. But they also want to allow safe houses, so they’ll make a safe house for any faction to avoid favoritism. No weapons and no fighting or you’re kicked out. No word on banning mindcontrol injections.

the conflict may not be discussed, even privately, within the confines of this compound.

Maybe the real problem with these books is that the author wants the flaws to be relatively obvious, and doesn’t see how those things ripple out to be so much more severe.

I think of the gun I hid under my mattress, and the tension between me and Peter, and Tobias and Marcus, and my mouth feels dry. I am not good at avoiding conflict.
“We won’t be able to stay long,” I say to Tobias under my breath.

Yes you fucking are. You were raised Abnegation, you were raised to get shoved to the floor by other factions without a word of protest. Peter is a loose cannon, get him to lay into you and he’ll be the one kicked out. Marcus is obviously a master of looking reasonable, but Tobias’ behavior so far has been ridiculously restrained, down to sitting between you two at the end of last book. He’s not happy but he’s not aggressive toward Marcus in the least. On top of that, I bet Amity would have little problem with the concept of restraining orders – if you say Tobias is unhappy around Marcus, they should agree the two should can separate.

But apparently the author’s already forgotten sixteen years of her character’s life and Tris is going to be a Strong Female Character by having temper that gets her into trouble.