In the middle of the night, Christina wakes up Tris because there’s a commotion.  They run out find out that Al died at the bottom of the chasm.  It seems he’s committed suicide.  The emotional reaction to it is actually pretty well done.  For all this book’s faults, it at least does emotions fairly well. 

No, if this book is going to mess up suicide, it’s going to do it in a meta-scale.  And I can’t tell about that until we see more.

The funeral apparently involves a lot of drinking.  Everyone is drunk.  Random people are filling up the pit with drunken commotion.  That’s a lot of drunk people for a kid that no one outside of his few friends really knew.  When strangers come to your funeral to support your bereaved love-ones, that implies a sense of community that doesn’t really mesh with the idea of hyper-competitiveness.    

As Tris mingles with the rest of the initiates, Molly starts teasing her again, so Tris socks her in the face.  Because that’s how Tris solves all her problems.  She just punches people into submission.  I wouldn’t mind it so much if it were actually treated as a fault.

Then Eric stands up and delivers a speech about how death is the great unknown, and brave are those who venture forth early.  Tris gets upset at that and leaves.

Courageous? Courageous would have been admitting weakness and leaving Dauntless, no matter what shame accompanied it.

You mean, sort of like he was doing when he intentionally threw his fights so he wouldn’t have to hurt anyone, but you called him weak for it?

At least she goes on to say some good stuff, about how Eric shouldn’t be praising Al for jumping, because now it’s seen as a viable option for others who might be considering suicide.  She says that what we say about people after their deaths are for the benefit of the living, and that’s more important than just trying to say nice things about someone who isn’t around anymore.

There’s a weird thing about this book: it says a lot of really great stuff.  It really does.  But it stops at saying it.  Like the author has all these good talking points, but she hasn’t worked out yet how to actually work them into a narrative.  So instead, she just dumps them all out in speeches and carries merrily along with all the rest of the crazy shit when it comes to the actual story-telling part.

Four warns her to stop…um, whichever of the things she’s doing (acting smart?  Bad-mouthing the faction?  Claiming that Abnegation wouldn’t have driven Al to suicide?) because she’s being watched.

“If I were you, I would do a better job of pretending that selfless impulse is going away,” he says, “because if the wrong people discover it…well, it won’t be good for you.”

God, every time this comes up, it just hurts my soul.  So now you can’t be Dauntless unless you are also, by definition, a selfish prick.  You can’t be brave and look out for other people at the same time.  If you try it, they’ll murder you.

Which is why Tori helped cover up Tris’s test scores at great personal risk to herself.

Huh.  Maybe Tris shouldn’t be trusting Tori so much…

“I don’t understand,” I say, “why they care what I think, as long as I’m acting how they want me to.”

“You’re acting how they want you to now,” he says, “but what happens when your Abnegation-wired brain tells you to do something else, something they don’t want?”

Such as…?

I really don’t understand the danger here.  If this is an issue, then why let kids chose their factions at all?  And who is ‘they’?  The Dauntless leaders?  Someone even higher up?  And what do they think she’ll do?  Be nice?  (BTW, not much chance of that.)

“My first instinct is to push you until you break, just to see how hard I have to press,” he says, […]“But I resist it.”

“Why…” I swallow hard. “Why is that your first instinct?”

“Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up. I’ve seen it. It’s fascinating.” He releases me but doesn’t pull away, his hand grazing my jaw, my neck. “Sometimes I just…want to see it again. Want to see you awake.”

I get the feeling the book wants me to see that as being really deep and poetic.  I don’t.  That’s creepy as fuck.  He wants to break her just for his own viewing pleasure.  He wants to push her and torment her and fuck around in her life, just because he likes watching.  That’s sick.

I feel small again, but this time, it doesn’t scare me. I squeeze my eyes shut. He doesn’t scare me anymore.

He just admitted to wanting to ‘break’ you for nothing but his own enjoyment, and that made you magically un-scared of him?

The simulations drove a crack through Al so wide he could not mend it. Why not me?

A mixture of sociopathy and an author who doesn’t realize what psychological torture really means.

“If I had forgiven him,” I say, “do you think he would be alive now?”

“I don’t know,” he replies. He presses his hand to my cheek, and I turn my face into it, keeping my eyes closed.

“I feel like it’s my fault.”

Now, this would be an interesting reaction to the suicide, delving into Tris’s feelings of guilt for her part, even though it wasn’t her fault, since guilt is irrational like that.  Instead, it’s a throwaway line, and most of Tris’s inner thoughts are selfishly focused herself and her Divergent-ness.

Then Four says yet another heavy-handed hint that he’s from Abnegation, which Tris doesn’t pick up on, then he kisses her forehead.

Later that night, after getting another tattoo (because why not?) Tris and her friends go back to the chasm.  They’ve gathered to throw newspapers away, because Tris still hates Erudite with their…um…evil statistics?

So, Al just died because Dauntless is a fucked up place of fuckedness that thinks it’s okay to torture children just to see what’s in their brains, but we’re still stuck on Erudite being evil?  Really?

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a good idea to have more than one faction in control of the government. And maybe it would be nice if we had more cars and…fresh fruit and…”

“You do realize there’s no secret warehouse where all that stuff is kept, right?” I ask, my face getting hot.

“Yes, I do,” he says. “I just think that comfort and prosperity are not a priority for Abnegation, and maybe they would be if the other factions were involved in our decision making.”

“Because giving an Erudite boy a car is more important than giving food to the factionless,” I snap.

No, but maybe if someone intelligent were at the helm, we’d have enough resources for food and cars.  Ever think of that, Tris?

Beside, Will didn’t say he wanted a car.  He said it would be nice if there were more around.  And you know what, yeah.  Transportation is a pretty big deal, especially in a large city.  Freedom of movement goes hand-in-hand with a free exchange of ideas and goods.  Having everyone stuck in their own little sectors really isn’t helping anyone.

“All that stuff she said about your dad, though,” he says, “makes me kind of hate her. I can’t imagine what good can come of saying such terrible things.”

What did she say?  There was one instance, where she implied that he was a bad parent, but that only came up once.  So…we basing all this hatred on one news report?

Along the way back to the dorm, Tris spots Four going somewhere and follows him.  He’s off to the holodeck, and when he sees her, he invites her to go along.  Because…yeah, sure, running around through someone else’s greatest fears.  That sounds like a fun time.

They both get ready and enter the illusion, and first up his heights.  They’re on top of a building.  So, naturally, the way to fix this is to…jump off the side.  Right.  That’s a really healthy way to deal with your fears: do the self-destructive thing that your fear was warning you away from in the first place.

Next, he’s claustrophobic, so they’re stuck in a small box.  Tris snuggles up on him and talks him through calming down, while at the same time getting all giggly on the inside because she’s snuggled up with Four.   He tells her that being trapped in a tiny closet was one of his childhood punishments. 

Next, oh fuck me.  Next he has to shoot someone.  He’s afraid of taking another person’s life, so he’s training himself to not care so much.  Yeah, that’s really great.  Stellar work, there, Dauntless.  You’re taking sociopaths and making them even worse.

These are supposed to be Four’s worst fears. And though he panicked in the box and on the roof, he killed the woman without much difficulty. It seems like the simulation is grasping at any fears it can find within him, and it hasn’t found much.

Yeah.  Four’s creepy.

On to the next fear!  It’s Marcus, that child-beater mentioned way, way back, and Tris finally has it spelled out for her that Four is his son.  His real name is Tobias.  Tris tries to beat up hallucination-Marcus, which makes Four face up to his father, which means the end of the simulation.  So, yeah, he’s called Four because he has four fears. 

So…what does that mean?  Is that an unusually low number?  How many fears are normal?  And if the holodeck had to ‘grasp’ to come up with four, then…if he ends up drowning in an endless sea, would he just shrug and be cool with it?  If aliens abducted him, would he chuckle and make friends?  Are you telling me that there’s nothing else in the world that he’s afraid of?

What counts as a ‘fear’ for the purposes of this simulation?  What’s normal or abnormal?  If I don’t know the answers to these questions, then I can’t properly be impressed by what’s going on.  Nor can I use it to better understand the characters, except in the most one-dimensional way possible.