Last time, they resolve to return to the city soon.

Today, Tris continues stalking Marcus for info. Marcus, proving even evil people can serve the cause of good, heads off to check out the water filtration!

The filtration building is small, just one room with a few huge machines in it. As far as I can tell, some of the machines take in dirty water from the rest of the compound, a few of them purify it, others test it, and the last set pumps clean water back out to the compound.

This being the future, I can’t tell if this is the author not knowing anything about water treatment or them having super science. But two factors suggest strongly to me that it’s the former.

First, farming generally means irrigating crops, yet apparently they don’t use the nutrient-rich water for that. There isn’t even the suggestion they’re sifting the stuff out to be spread over the plants, it’s just being “purified” away into nonexistence.

Second…

The piping systems are all buried except one, which runs along the ground to send water to the power plant, near the fence. The plant provides power to the entire city, using a combination of wind, water, and solar energy.

…the author thinks water power is generated by pumping water to a power plant. If you don’t even understand what water power is, you certainly don’t know jack about filtration. People were using waterwheels back when we still thought shitting in the stuff you drank was smart and hadn’t even grasped the esoteric concept of boiling to sterilize.

(The fact she describes it as a single power plant indicates she’s not too clear on solar or wind energy either.)

Marcus stands near the machines that filter the water. There the pipes are transparent. I can see brown-tinged water rushing through one pipe, disappearing into the machine, and emerging clear. Both of us watch the purification happen, and I wonder if he is thinking what I am: that it would be nice if life worked this way, stripping the dirt from our lives and sending us out into the world clean.

It’d be nice if water filtration worked like this too. Or maybe not, this sounds like it might be violating conservation of mass where the, ahem, “dirt” just no longer exists, and I for one have always found the concept of stuff not just popping out of existence to be soothing.

Tris decides her brilliant plan is to tell Marcus she overheard the conversation. You can really see how she scored Erudite, can’t you.

“I’m a naturally curious person.

There’s really no way to lead this line but as her trying to shut him down when he tries to berate her for it. We’ve spend all the preceding chapters establishing she’s not. But hey, at least it works as her just refusing to give in and continuing to bulldog away at the one thing she is interested.

Anyway, he points out there’s no way he’d tell her.

“My father,” I say. “My father is dead.” It’s the first time I’ve said it since I told Tobias, on the train ride over, that my parents died for me. “Died” was just a fact to me then, detached from emotion. But “dead,” mingling with the churning and bubbling noises in this room, strikes a blow like a hammer to my chest, and the monster of grief awakens, clawing at my eyes and throat.
I force myself to continue.
“He may not have actually died for whatever information you were referring to,” I say. “But I want to know if it was something he risked his life for.”

But you know, as incredibly frustrating as Tris’ lack of curiosity is, and how much I hate how she acts like there’s something weird about just basic interest in the world around her, she’s a good character overall. You can look at her and say, okay, I guess this person feels that way. This particular response to emotion is certainly a convenient one from the narrative standpoint, minimizing the time spent on dealing with fallout, but it’s also believable that Tris could respond by walling thoughts off. It’s not like this is her only emotional response so far, either – it’s just that Will has been the primary thing she keeps coming back to.

On top of that, we’ve established Tris struggles with her emotions and even had some implication of why – she’s so used to being told she has to do things because it’s proper Abnegation behavior rather than being given a chance to feel the emotions that normally motivate people that she can take a while to find her legs in a situation. I’m not sure how well Abnegation mourns, either – we don’t know the adult side for sure, there seems to have been little concern among the children about how Tobias was handling his mom’s death after the funeral, and that means no adults thought enough to intervene there. Abnegation seems to have generally muted responses to things, and Tris has claimed crime and murder simply don’t happen, so she’s not going to have any idea how to handle both her parents being murdered in a genocidal coup.

And god, I keep coming back to how the second Hunger Games decided to handle emotions as all about being an empty void. This is so much better.

He says that yes, it was what they died for, and she demands to know what it was, and he repeats that he’s not telling.

I wish I could see like Johanna sees, like the Candor see—I wish I could read his expression.

Another moment of Tris realizing that yes, knowledge and information help, without actually connecting that she’s talking about knowledge and information and that she should see about learning this skill.

(Johanna could even be an ally here, as she certainly wants to know as well, and besides, someone like Tris who’s prone to action is going to be less trouble if she doesn’t feel she has to guess at everything – you can predict right away that Dauntless are more likely to default to the charge forward and try to call their bluff style of uncertainty over the hold back because you’re uncertain style. Indeed, Tris’ next statement is that damn, she can’t tell how close he might be to giving in and admitting the truth, better turn up the pressure just in case!)

She offers to help, and Marcus tells her she’s some idiot who just won by luck and he doesn’t think she’ll ever actually be useful.

This is the Marcus that Tobias knows. The one who knows right where to hit to cause the most damage.

…seriously? Because unless you’re referring to the blinding outrage you feel when faced with people who are really, really dumb as “most damage”, I don’t see how this works. First, you know the Abnegation are helpless. I was going to use a livestock metaphor here, like sheep, but frankly sheep have a lot of defensive methods on their side that we saw no sign of from the Abnegation. For example, attempting to flee as a crowd appears to be beyond them.

Marcus could make a decent case that just because she stopped the simulation doesn’t prove that she’s some superhero and that it could’ve easily gone a different way – maybe rub her face in the fact she only got that far because both her parents died clearing the way, that’d seem like a good way to hurt her and undermine her feelings of competency. But the fact remains Marcus was not only helpless, but didn’t even do anything to aid in her lucky success. If anyone comes for them here, he’ll only live if the Dauntless fight them off. If he returns to the city, it’ll only be because the Dauntless are protecting him to get him there. At absolute best, he might be thinking Tobias is enough help at this point and he doesn’t need to bargain to get it, but Tobias is not someone to rely on – he doesn’t seem willing to attack Marcus yet, but he also seems likely to passive aggressively let the guy die and if not, may freeze up in a vital situation or just make dumb decisions in general from the stress of being around his dad. It’s believable that Marcus would feel enough control over the situation to not worry that his abused kid had learned to murder people with knives, that’s understandable arrogance. Relying on his abused kid to keep him alive, though, that’s pretty hard to swallow. And there’s no way Marcus can survive on his own nonexistent merits.

In sum, if she’s useless he’s actively detrimental, and she knows it. If she only succeeded by luck, well, Marcus wouldn’t have even made it out alive on his own. It’s the last thing that should be a weak spot. Hell, all the other people who kept Marcus alive are now dead!

But yeah so being told she’s useless and he’s not impressed is apparently the worst thing imaginable as far as Tris is concerned, which in a backwards way makes it true that Marcus is apparently a master at his craft, since I don’t think there was the slightest hint this would be a good tactic and yet Marcus could somehow tell it was a great idea.

Cue flailing.

“Tobias is right about you,” I say. “You’re nothing but an arrogant, lying piece of garbage.”
“He said that, did he?” Marcus raises his eyebrows.
“No,” I say. “He doesn’t mention you enough to say anything like that. I figured it out all on my own.” I clench my teeth. “You’re almost nothing to him, you know. And as time goes on, you become less and less.”
Marcus doesn’t answer me. He turns back to the water purifier. I stand for a moment in my triumph, the sound of rushing water combining with the heartbeat in my ears. Then I leave the building, and it isn’t until I’m halfway across the field that I realize I didn’t win. Marcus did.

Christ Tris, you lost as soon as you did that weird jump from “your son says you suck/your son didn’t say anything it’s all my own option”.

I’d also like to criticize you for the fact that’s not how Dauntless win. They win with punching. Now, I recognize this was a bad idea, but I’d like it more if you’d wanted to punch him and chose not to because you suspected he was trying to bait you into causing trouble, and that was your win. As it is, violence doesn’t seem to have occurred to you and that makes me sad, because you are the only YA protagonist whose violence is enjoyable.

Worse, Tris leaves thinking that this means she’ll have to find out from another person, because she’s not even considering beating the info out of him as soon as they step out of Amity’s anti-violence sanctum. I can only assume her current gun twitchiness is overflowing into an uncomfortableness with Dauntless behavior in general.

Speaking of, her nightmare that night is a return to the crows, this time pecking at Will’s corpse wearing Abnegation clothes. She wakes and goes to Tobias and they start to have sex but when he accidentally brushes her injury it reminds her of why she’s doing this and she decides she doesn’t want the first time she has sex to be because she’s out of her mind with grief and guilt, so she stops. This series is doing perhaps the best job I’ve seen so far with sex – the author’s avoiding having Tris actually have sex, but there’s good reasons to be leery of actually encouraging teens toward sex, and this is covering all the stuff that really matters – it’s okay to feel you’re not ready, you shouldn’t think you have to to keep a boyfriend, and now that you can decide to stop having sex at any point. And Tobias is fine with this.

This aspect of Tobias reminds me of Graceling’s perfect boyfriend, but as it was then, it’s really nice how she’s not getting pressured or pushed into this, and if we’re talking about what lesson books hold, you could do a hell of a lot worse than “good boyfriends don’t pressure you when you say no”.

“I don’t mean to be such a mess,” I say, my voice cracking. “I just feel so …” I shake my head.
“It’s wrong,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if your parents are in a better place—they aren’t here with you, and that’s wrong, Tris. It shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have happened to you. And anyone who tells you it’s okay is a liar.”

This, though, is just weird, especially for how areligious the books have been. It seems so specifically a rebuttal to a particular religious statement that it makes me wonder if the author actually heard this at some point and the outrage stayed with her.

The chapter ends with Tris finally managing to calm down and falling asleep with him. Right before she drifts off, he confesses he loves her, which is cute.