The next day, they start phase two, and the transfers and the locals are all mixed together in one class again.  One of the local girls taunts Peter for being in first place.

“Bet I could take you.” She says it casually, turning the ring in her eyebrow with her fingertips. “I’m second, but I bet any of us could take you, transfer.”

Thing is, they’re talking about fighting skills.  They’re talking about the raw ability to punch someone else until that person stops moving.  That’s a matter of skill and practice, and mental conditioning, not bravery.  So of course someone who’s been around fighting all their life can whoop someone who hasn’t.  Even if the kids haven’t been training for fighting (and why wouldn’t they?), they’d still be mentally prepared for it in a way that transfers couldn’t. 

So why does this book spend so much time carrying on as if fighting skills are in direct correlation with bravery?  I’m not saying that it’s not possible to brag about being a skilled fighter, especially when you’re ranked according to said skills, but…why are they ranked by that?  If the core value being tested here is bravery, then why are all the scores based on skills?

See, the problem is that a skills-based ranking system implies that they value accomplishments more than intent.  They value the ability to get shit done more than the ability to face one’s own personal fears.  But that value system flies in the face of a lot of other shit they do, like the stunts they pull to prove bravery or the utter and complete lack of instruction at every turn.  Their whole values system is such a mishmash of conflicting bullshit.

Anyway, all the kids are sitting in a hallway waiting to be called into a room one-by-one.  Finally Tris goes in, and she sees a simulator set up like the one they had for her aptitude test.  Seems they’re going to make her literally face down her fears. 

“In addition to containing the transmitter, the serum stimulates the amygdala, which is the part of the brain involved in processing negative emotions—like fear—and then induces a hallucination. The brain’s electrical activity is then transmitted to our computer, which then translates your hallucination into a simulated image that I can see and monitor. I will then forward the recording to Dauntless administrators. You stay in the hallucination until you calm down—that is, lower your heart rate and control your breathing.”

…so, they induce a terrifying hallucination and stimulate a part of her brain that will make her even more scared and instead of mentally scaring her, this is supposed to help?  This isn’t like throwing kids in the deep end of the pool.  You can’t just fuck with someone’s brain chemistry like that and expect them to be okay.  This is basically torturing someone and then saying “of, fuck, pull up your big girl britches and get over it.”  You don’t just get over something like this.

The fact that he tells her all this after injecting her, giving her no chance to say “y’all crazy, I’m going to go join Fred,” just makes it a million times creepier. 

Ever heard of SERE training in the army?  There’s a part of it where students are treated like POWs, and the instructors ‘torture’ them while they try to resist.  You know what keeps people from going crazy doing that?  There are limits to what the instructors can do.  At all times, students know that they are students, that there are boundaries, that if they get sick or injured the simulation will stop.  No one is actually in any danger.  Even with that assurance, it’s ungodly hard to get through it.  Once you fuck with brain chemistry and take that away, you end up with honest-to-god trauma.

Dauntless, you are breaking your own people. 

(Heard one story from a guy coming from SERE: one of the methods of torture they use is to give the ‘POW’ very little sleep, and they play the sound of boots marching and people whispering to keep the guys awake.  When he got through the training and was at his graduation ceremony, the sound of everyone marching in parade (i.e., boots) made him go all twitchy and he almost had to leave.  And no one stimulated his amygdale on top of all that.)

(More about SERE school.  Some of the comments are pretty illuminating as well.)

So, back to Tris.  She goes under and starts hallucinating that she’s being attacked by birds and can’t run away from them.  Because this is totally the kind of situation she might have to face and overcome in real life.  Yeah.  Sure.  And…somehow, even though she’s experiencing all the fear and sensations that go along with being pecked to death and suffocating on crow feathers, she…magically manages to get control of her breathing and heart rate.  Because…she’s secretly a Bhuddist monk and has training in how to control her automatic body functions?  Because her brain thought she was dying and started shutting down her organs in response?  Because reasons?

She wakes up back in the room, and she’s all shaky and unsteady so Four helps her walk back to the dorms.  Along the way, Tris rightly describes what they’re doing as torture and demands to know what the point is.

“Learning how to think in the midst of fear,” he says, “is a lesson that everyone, even your Stiff family, needs to learn.

You know what would help with this?  If they had any sort of actual objective.  Tris didn’t have to ‘think’ and figure out how to get away from the crows; she just had to sit there and take it until her body gave up.  Or whatever happened.

“What was your first hallucination?” I say, glancing at him.

“It wasn’t a ‘what’ so much as a ‘who.’” He shrugs. “It’s not important.”

These ‘hints’ are getting annoying.  We know he’s the child abuse kid.  Come on, book, you’re not even trying to be clever anymore.

“But becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it, that’s the point.”

Okay, fair enough.  For some fears.  But, personally, I don’t want to get over my fear of flinging myself from a moving vehicle.  I think I’m doing just fine hanging onto that one.

“Anyway, your fears are rarely what they appear to be in the simulation,” he adds.

THEN WHY THE FUCK DO YOU DO THAT?

“So what am I really afraid of?” I say.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Only you can know.”

I nod slowly. There are a dozen things it could be, but I’m not sure which one is right, or if there’s even one right one.

Hm, that seems kind of weird.  I mean, there’s a difference between being pathologically afraid of crows, and saying that being pecked to death by mind-controlled birds (hey, they weren’t acting normal) is no big thang.  I mean, she can be legit afraid of that.  I know I would be. 

“The leadership,” he says. “The person who controls training sets the standard of Dauntless behavior. Six years ago Max and the other leaders changed the training methods to make them more competitive and more brutal, said it was supposed to test people’s strength. And that changed the priorities of Dauntless as a whole. Bet you can’t guess who the leaders’ new protégé is.”

And the whole rest of the faction went along with this?

Look, you can tell me the leaders are doing it, but it’s just not that easy.  The leaders can’t look at all the adults and say “change your priorities” and have that happen.  They might get a little bit of change through subtle methods, but not core-value change.  Not that fast, and not that cleanly.  And, what, are there no parents who protest that their kids might get kicked out of the faction just because they didn’t rank high enough?  Because that seems like something a lot of parents would get up in arms about.

Oh, and there’s a couple of tepid attempts at romance, but they’re mostly in the form of Tris wondering why she wants to cuddle up to him.  The overall effect is sporadic, like they’re having a normal conversation and then the author came in afterwards and shoved in a few awkward lines here and there to justify getting them together at the end.

Later, she goes in the dorm and sees Peter.  He’s reading aloud from a newspaper, an article that says that the number of kids leaving Abnegation is indicative that their faction isn’t so great after all.  Tris flips her shit, because she’s mentioned by name, since both her and her bother left.  In one particular case, Molly is quoted as saying something untrue about Tris that suggests she’s afraid of her dad.

Tris tries to get a hold of the paper, convinced she has to burn it for some reason.  See, the thing is, that paper didn’t say anything untrue.  At least, not from the reporter’s standpoint.  The fact that Molly gave false witness doesn’t mean the reporter is making stuff up.  And the number of Abnegation transfers is just a matter of basic math.  Plus, this is clearly an op-ed piece.

So…Tris doesn’t believe in freedom of the press?  She tries to burn and suppress everything that disagrees with her or exposes her family’s dirty laundry?  I mean, I would call this instance just an emotional reaction, but this theme has been repeated over the course of the book so far.  And it doesn’t come off as if we’re supposed to disagree with Tris here.

Will pulls her off after she tries to physically attack Molly.

“No, they’re not. They’re arrogant and dull, and that’s why I left them, but they aren’t revolutionaries. They just want more say, that’s all, and they resent Abnegation for refusing to listen to them.”

“They don’t want people to listen, they want people to agree,” I reply. “And you shouldn’t bully people into agreeing with you.”

LKJSFALKJSDFLKJSDFASDL TRIS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR BRAIN?

YOU JUST TRIED TO PUNCH SOMEONE INTO AGREEING WITH YOU.

ALL THEY’RE DOING IS REPORTING MATH.

THAT’S NOT BULLYING; THAT’S STATISTICS.

And being angry that the people in charge aren’t listening to your concerns (your, from all appearances, very valid concerns) is not a sign of evilness.

I mean, it’s not like they’re Abnegation and ignoring everyone else to go do whatever they want because they arrogantly believe that they know best.

Apparently the answer to all this is to go get more tattoos.  That’ll make everything better.

While out walking around afterwards, they see Four, drunk as a skunk.

“Sure, but Four is scary. Remember when he put the gun up to Peter’s head? I think Peter wet himself.”

“Peter deserved it,” I say firmly.

FUCK YOU, TRIS.

NO, SERIOUSLY.  FUCK YOU.

NO ONE DESERVES TO HAVE A GUN SHOVED IN THEIR FACE.

Four comes up and says drunk-y things to Tris, just idle chit-chat stuff, including that she ‘looks good.’  Um…okay?  And then she and her friends scamper off to dinner, thinking that was weird.  I kind of am, too.  Weird and pointless.

At home I used to spend calm, pleasant nights with my family. My mother knit scarves for the neighborhood kids. My father helped Caleb with his homework. There was a fire in the fireplace and peace in my heart, as I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing, and everything was quiet.

I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.

This pisses me off in all new ways.  That ‘peace’ isn’t restrained, it’s just not for you.  Loud noises don’t make everyone in the world feel ‘free,’ for some of us, they make us feel trapped and assaulted.