Tris goes in for another torture session that’s supposed to magically teach her how to slow down her own heart rate through the power of happy thoughts and fairy farts.  Or, you know, whatever.  One excuse would make about as much sense as any other.  This time, she’s trapped in a glass box filling with water with all her classmates watching.

This time, while she’s thrashing around, she kicks the glass tank open and escapes from it.  Somehow this is all super-mega-cool, because it lets Four know that she’s Divergent.  Apparently she ‘manipulated the simulation.’  Um…how?  She thrashed around until the glass broke.  How is that different from what anyone else would do? 

And furthermore, all Divergent is supposed to mean is that she’s suited to more than one faction.  Now it means she has super-monk-self-control powers?

Maybe part of the problem here is that nothing outside of Tris is really explored.  We don’t know what makes her Divergent-ness special from other people, because we don’t care enough about those other people to really delve into them.  Instead we just see stock characters that are pretty much the same as Tris.  We don’t know the parameters of that simulation, or what’s supposed to be possible or impossible, or why someone else couldn’t have broken the glass, so it’s not really shocking for us that she did that.  It’s just another thing that happened, in a string of other things that have happened, all without context or weight.

Four freaks out, says she should hide her Divergent-ness (how, when such random things are declared Divergent?) and deletes the recording of that simulation.

She goes to see Tori (her proctor) to ask about what Divergent really means.

“Among other things, you…you are someone who is aware, when they are in a simulation, that what they are experiencing is not real,” she says. “Someone who can then manipulate the simulation or even shut it down.

Is this a byproduct of something else, or just one note in a random list of ‘powers’ that she has?  Because it’s being treated like powers.  She can do this, and that thing, and some other thing.  Not one basic change which has far-reaching consequences.

Tori also says that if the Dauntless leaders find out about her, she’ll die.  But she doesn’t bother to explain why they would do this.  When Tris protests that they wouldn’t randomly kill people (without asking ‘why,’ come on Tris, get to the good questions) Tori said that her brother was Divergent as well and he was killed and had it look like a suicide. 

Tris also figures out that Four knows about Divergent because he either is one or is close to someone who is one.  I’m putting my bets on ‘is one.’

Man, for something supposed to be secret and rare, these people are popping up left and right.

Four days later, and the evil Erudites are evily spreading their evil news articles again.  Evil.

It makes a lot of sense, which makes me suspect it is a call for revolution wrapped in the clothing of rationality.

Really.  I want to know.  What’s wrong with your brain?

Tris has been going through the torture sessions, and they’ve started a repeating pattern, making her live through the hallucination of being forced to shoot her family.  And…she’s taking it all very calmly.  She comes out of it and is just sort of sober, no real other problems, and just sits and talks to Four about it. 

Because, you know, killing your family that you already feel guilty about leaving, that wouldn’t be extremely mentally scaring or anything.

Maybe that’s one of her Divergent powers.  Some special kind of brain damage that makes logical things suspicious and traumatizing things just not stick.

Even thinking the word feels dangerous.

You can tell by the way she casually skipped over four days and implies that everything is carrying on as normal.  DANGER!

The simulations should disturb me more; they should break my mind, as they have been doing to most of the other initiates. Drew doesn’t sleep—he just stares at the wall, curled in a ball. Al screams every night from his nightmares and cries into his pillow. My nightmares and chewed fingernails pale by comparison.

So…yeah, Divergent = brain damage.  Or possibly = sociopath.

Seriously, I don’t want to meet the person who shrugs off killing their parents.  Even if it is just a hallucination.  That’s uber-creepy.

Is it being Divergent that makes me steady, or is it something else?

She claims that her sociopathic ability to remain dull as a post in the midst of torture means she’s “strong.”  The worst part about that statement is that it implies that the others are weak.  It takes all the onus off the asswarts who thought up this crazy plan, and instead it places the responsibility on the poor kids who are going in to get tortured every day.  “Why are you all breaking down?  It’s just chemically-induced torture-porn.  If you were stronger, you’d get over it.  I mean, it’s totally reasonable for people to do this to us; you just have to get through it.”

No.  The kids are reacting the way people are supposed to react, because there is no ‘getting over’ torture.  That is a lie that 007 movies told you.  You endure, maybe, and then try and piece together your life afterwards.  Maybe.  If you have good professional help.  It’s not a training tool. 

I’ll blame the writer for this one.  It seems less like a crazy thought of Tris’s and more like everyone expects this to work.  Even Tori talked about ‘the simulations’ like they were just a really unpleasant part of boot camp.

When Tris gets back to the room, she finds out that they’ve re-done the ranks, and she’s now in first place.  Peter is pissed off at her and attacks.  When Will steps in to help, Peter claims that she’s “manipulating” people so that she can get the top score.

Which, fine, he’s a bully and supposed to be reacting emotionally.  But Will gets suspicious.

“How on earth would I do that?” I scowl at him. “I’m just doing the best I can, like anyone else.”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs a little. “By acting weak so we pity you? And then acting tough to psyche us out?”

And what would that accomplish?  Unless the other people are intentionally sabotaging their own scores in order to make sure she has a higher rank, then all of this is just silly.  In fact, the whole idea of any of this is just silly.  It’s not quite the right kind of competition for this sort of accusation to work.  See, no initiate has any influence over the performance of anyone else.  It’s not an “I win, you fail” set up.  In fact, there’s no failing at all.  There’s simply not making the cut.  So you can’t do anything except do your best and hope you do better than everyone else.  Or stab them in the eye, but that’s not exactly manipulation.

If this included any sort of teamwork, I could see manipulation.  One person could find a way to take the credit for a group effort, or make themselves look better.  Of even if there was a pass/fail set up, so you could trick someone else into failing a task.  But that’s simply not going on here.

After talking to Al and seeing he’s all broken but not able to do anything about it, Tris wanders around outside until she comes across Uriah and some other classmates.  They invite her along to play William Tell.

“It’s not a real gun,” says Lynn quietly. “It’s got plastic pellets in it. The worst it’ll do is sting her face, maybe give her a welt. What do you think we are, stupid?”

Hello, blindness!

But Uriah hits the muffin they’re using for a target and Marlene is fine.  They all sit around talking about ranks for a while, until Four finds them and tells them to stop goofing off.  Before Tris can leave, he assures her that she’s supposed to be in Dauntless.

Um…what she acting particularly doubtful?  She scored first place.  Why so random, Four?

This whole chapter is pretty random.  It’s just…stuff, happening.  Like the author had a bunch of little things to get through before the next big section, so she shoved them all into one spot.

Later that night, Tris goes to get a drink of water and overhears Eric talking to someone about searching out Divergent ‘rebels.’  How convenient that these two people walked all the way over to the initiate dorms to talk about this.

Before she can hear anything good, Peter and some other people grab her drag her over to the chasm.  I guess this all went unnoticed by Eric and his mystery person.  The push her backwards over the railing and then grope her chest and make fun of her lack of breasts.  Yeah, they sexually assault her.  Because that’s just so what this scene needed.  Random sexual assault.

She fights the kids, and finally gets her blindfold off, and one of the kids turns out to be Al.  Tris manages to thrash around and fight most of them off, but Peter gets her over the edge of the chasm and she almost falls in.  Right at the last second, Four shows up, kicks all the asses that are left to kick, and helps Tris climb back over the railing to safety.