The next day, Tris and Christina talk about the sparing partners they’ve been matched up with.  It’s nice to see a female friendship in a YA book.  I think this is the first time on this blog I’ve reviewed a book where the main character had a female friend who was actually a peer and important, not just someone to waste time with until the boy shows up. 

Of course, it’s tempered by the fact that they’re sneering at this Molly girl for being husky.

Will and Al stand across from each other in the arena. They put their hands up by their faces to protect themselves, as Four taught us

So…body shots, then.  Come on, boys, you got to protect your face and your torso.

So, back to Molly.  Seems she’s part of a group of friends (Peter, Molly, Drew) who are all from Candor and really close.  Christina doesn’t like them.

“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.

Uh, that’s pretty standard small child behavior.  I was not aware that we were classifying six year olds as ‘pure evil’ now.

And of course, they believed him, because we were Candor and we couldn’t lie. Ha ha.”

Okay, there’s a difference between valuing some quality and believing that small children are physically incapable of lying.  That’s ridiculous.  And, Christina, you’re from Candor and ‘can’t lie’ as well.  If you told a conflicting story, what would happen?  Did you ever try and stand up for people, or did you just sit in the background and judge them?

The other two are characterized as stupid and sadistic.  So, I guess we’ve found our Mean Girls for the evening.  *sigh*  It’s not like being in a training session that, literally, might kill you is enough, no, we have to add in the one-dimensional high school bullies, or else it’s not a YA book.

You know, bullies are mean and exist and are something teens have to deal with quite often, so I don’t mind seeing them show up in books directed at teens.  Of course they should be there.  But do they have to be so flat and blunt?  And do they have to be characterized as more evil than, oh I don’t know, the jerkoffs that kill children just for the lolz?  Bullies are people, too.  Solving the problem of bullies requires understanding that they are people with feelings and issues.  I’m not saying that you have to tip-toe around them and cry ‘poor baby, all is forgiven, have a cookie.’  I’m just saying that you can’t fix a people problem by treating it like a cartoon problem.

Will stumbles to the side, one hand pressed to his face, and blocks Al’s next punch with his free hand. Judging by his grimace, blocking the punch is as painful as a blow would have been. Al is slow, but powerful.

Seriously, you guys have sucky teachers.  If you’re up against a powerful but slow opponent, you don’t block his blows, you dodge them.  Stay light on your feet, Will!  Move around!

The boys that are fighting don’t know when to stop, and Eric says it’s when one of them is too broke to continue.  God, you’re stupid, Eric.  It’s their second day.  Are you training them or solely focused on elimination?  Because for the record, you don’t train people by breaking them.  You do it by actually training them.

Four says one of them could concede, too, and that makes Eric mad.

“A brave man acknowledges the strength of others,” Four replies.

“A brave man never surrenders.”

No, a stupid man never surrenders.  Unless losing comes with an automatic case of death, then surrendering is often a good tactic.  It means you can fuck shit up later, maybe.  Fighting to the death in a hopeless situation just means…well, death, and what good does that do anyone?

The boys go back to fighting, and Al knocks Will out with a head shot.  Because, you know, concussions are nothing!  Just get up and walk it off, Will.  It’s not like you’ve got a bruise on your brain that could lead to permanent damage, or any possible complications from being hit that hard.

Hey, I think I just figured out why Dauntless people are so stupid.

Four leaving makes me nervous. Leaving us with Eric is like hiring a babysitter who spends his time sharpening knives.

Other than the usual stupidity, what was Eric actually done that’s so evil?  Oh, right, jack shit nothing.  Shut up, Tris.

Next up, Christina and Molly fight.

If conflict in Dauntless ends with only one person standing, I am unsure of what this part of initiation will do to me. Will I be Al, standing over a man’s body, knowing I’m the one who put him on the ground, or will I be Will, lying in a helpless heap?

Thank you for bringing that up.  It is an interesting dilemma.  Of course, I would have expected something like this in Hunger Games, not here, where they’re supposed to be a functioning society and not a battle royal.

And is it selfish of me to crave victory, or is it brave?

It’s selfish.  None of you know the meaning or point of ‘brave.’  On the other hand, selfish is not a uniformly bad trait.  Sometimes you need to be selfish in order to not be dead.  Well, that was an easy question.  Got any stumpers for me?

Molly proceeds to beat the living shit out of Christina, and Tris silently hopes for Christina to go unconscious and end the fight, because no one in this world realizes that being knocked out is brain damage.  Christina finally tries to call uncle, but this makes Eric angry.

He pulls Christina out of the room and over to that underground river thing.  He says if she can hang over the side for five minutes, he’ll forget her “cowardice” and let her continue training.  Because, as we’ve covered before, all of these people are morons.  Besides, what if she’s brave enough to do it, but injured enough that she can’t hang on that long?

It’s like that witch test, where they throw you in the water, and if you sink and drown then it means you weren’t a witch, but oops, because you’re dead anyway.  (For the record, most people actually got pull out in time, but still.)  When your society’s views towards bravery can be compared to witch trials, you’ve reached the level of “holy balls, how much stupider can you sink?”

Christina survives her five minutes, but it’s a near thing, and then they’re allowed to pull her back up.

Later that night, Tris has a nightmare and wakes up to go to the bathroom.  When she comes back, her bed is spray-painted with “Stiff,” the slightly derogatory name for her old faction.  Peter did it.  Al comes over to help her change the sheets without being asked.  So, is he Divergent, too?  I mean, it’s normal, but it’s also just as nice as anything Tris has done, and supposedly she’s suited to the selfless-acts group.

Then when morning comes, they go to training, and Tris has to fight Peter.  That’s right, they’re fighting again.  Yesterday half of them got pummeled until they passed out, which I will never stop reminding you is BRAIN DAMAGE, and they got other injures as well.  But they’re fighting again.  So that they can exacerbate their injuries and make them all worse, I guess.

See, it’s possible to fight multiple days in a row.  Hell, you can do it multiple times in a day.  If you’re doing it safely and not brawling and grievously injuring each other.  This right here, though, is just ridiculous.

Hey, Eric, weight in for us on broken bones, torn ligaments, and infected cuts?  Can you punch those into submission, too?  Maybe just a nice dose of ‘suck it up’ will fix the problem, yes?

Peter wipes the floor with her.  I have to say, it’s nice to see a main character who isn’t weirdly marvelous at something on her first try.  (I’m looking at you Blood Red Road.)

She blacks out and wakes up in an infirmary bed hours later.  So, mid-range brain trauma, then.

She flashes back to a time when her mom broke her arm and went to a hospital.

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.

Um…so he can only comfort her with facts that aren’t true?

So, Christina, Al, and Will are all there when she wakes up.  I guess they either have very good timing, or they were hanging around her bedside all day.  The other two leave and Al stays behind to awkwardly tell Tris that her mashed-in face doesn’t look bad, because he’s a sweetie pie.  Tris sees what’s going on, but she’s not attracted in return, which is fine, of course.

Just…

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

Really?  What makes him fragile?

He threw his fight that day because he doesn’t like causing people pain.  For some reason Tris thinks this makes him a coward.  He’s got principles, and he follows those principles in the face of social pressure to break them.  Seems pretty brave to me.

Oh, I see, it’s only bravery if it’s what you want to do. 

This would never be an issue in Fred. 

They talk about Visiting Day, when they might be able to see their parents, but Tris doesn’t think her parents will come.  It makes her sad.  And then the chapter just sort of stutters to a close.