After storming off from training, Tris goes outside to mope for a while.

I just have to make sure that tomorrow, when I go through my own fear landscape, I prove them wrong. Yesterday failure seemed impossible. Today I’m not sure.

Once.  You failed once.  Get over your special-snowflake syndrome and find something new.  I would be forgiving if she were upset over having relived a very traumatic experience, but that’s not what’s going on here.  She doesn’t care that she had to go through that.  Not the first time, and not the second time.  Instead, she reserves all her angst for ‘failing,’ and I just don’t have any patience for that.

Instead she wonders where the train tracks go, then decides to spontaneously go visit her brother because…the plot said so.  Yeah, there’s some stuff in there about how her mother told her to go do it and she’s curious, but really?  She’s not curious until right now, right before she goes.  It hasn’t been on her mind.  She doesn’t plan to go see Caleb.  She just wanders around until a lightning bolt from the author-god makes her think “Oh.  Guess I should go do that now.”

This, I think, is a major difference between a proactive character and a reactive character.  A proactive character wants something and goes after it.  A proactive character wonders how to get a task done, then works towards that goal.  A reactive character just waits for the most convenient moment before she even starts thinking about doing stuff.

I don’t want to go back, but choosing to quit, to be factionless, would be the bravest thing I have ever done, and today I feel like a coward.

Choosing to quit because the Dauntless are fucking insane would be brave.  Choosing to quit because you want to make a statement (maybe about Al’s death?  Remember that?) would be brave.  Choosing to quit because you failed once and now are embarrassed is pretty much the definition of running away like a coward.

Why is your brain so broken?

Tris…somehow knows where the Erudite compound is, so she jumps off the train there and just wanders around to look for Caleb.

I pull the rubber band from my hair and shake it from its knot

*wince*  Why a rubber band?  Ouch.

She wanders around the library, thinking about how much she hates the faction’s leader for saying all those mean things about her dad.  …because the woman involved in the management of her entire faction really takes time out of her day to bother with writing news articles?  Oh, fuck it, maybe she does.  Hell, we don’t even know what format these ‘reports’ come in.  They seem to serve the function of a newspaper, but at the same time, they seem to come out one article at a time.  This whole thing is just a hot mess.

Also.  This book has done pretty fair on the feminism standpoint.  Not great, but better than most.  There’s important female characters, and Tris has two (if we count Tori) female friends who are peers, and the bit female characters aren’t degraded or demonized.  (Mostly.)  They’re just part of the fabric of the world, as it should be.  However, all the leaders have been male.  We don’t see all the leaders, but the ones we do see are Eric, Mr. Prior, another unnamed male that Eric works with, and Tobias’s dad.  And Jeanine, the leader of Erudite.  One female out of all the rest, and she’s considered evil by this book so far.

More than that, though.  “Beneath her [portrait] is a large plaque that reads KNOWLEDGE LEADS TO PROSPERITY.

Prosperity. To me the word has a negative connotation. Abnegation uses it to describe self-indulgence.”

The only female leader is evil, and she’s evil for being ambitious.  You see this all the time in novels and other forms of media, the idea that an ambitious woman is somehow cold, ruthless, or a bitch.  Just think of the stereotypical portrayal of a female executive: heartless, mean, work-driven, cruel to her underlings, etc.  And while you see this with men as well, it’s not as lopsided.  There are a lot more kind male leaders in fiction, even fair and ambitious male leaders.  Not so with females.  It’s generally portrayed that any woman with any amount of ambition has to be a bitch.  And if she’s not evil…well, she’s still not a nice person.  As if we assume that ambition is unnatural for women, and so to achieve it, a woman has to bastardize some part of her femininity.  Or something. 

It’s all bullshit, of course, and I’m sick to death of seeing it.  And while this author seems to be on board with including more females in her story, she still couldn’t avoid the pitfall of the Evil Ambitious Female Leader. 

I probably wouldn’t mind it so much if we had just one good female official to counter her with.  Preferably more than one, though.

Also, if Abnegation thinks prosperity is to be avoided, then they really don’t need to be in charge of anything.

How could Caleb have chosen to be one of these people? The things they do, the things they want, it’s all wrong.

Things they do: research, math, news-reporting

Things they want: fair and equal representation in government, no more child-abuse

Did I miss something?  Did the author cut out some important scene in the editing process and just forget to work the evils of Erudite back into the story?  Is there any way in which this actually makes sense?

But he probably thinks the same of the Dauntless.

Honey, everything thinks the same of Dauntless.  Come on, even you think that.  Sometimes.  When you remember to.

Then again, this is the same girl that thinks that locks on the outside of the gate only might mean that they’re keeping people in, not keeping bad stuff out.

If Erudite is supposed to be good and this is all just Tris’s inner blathering and prejudice, then kudos for that, but it’s still not written well.  Tris hasn’t been wrong about anything so far, which makes it hard to see her as an unreliable narrator.  There hasn’t been any doubt in the narration or story, no hint that we’re not supposed to take this all seriously.

If you want to make a story where the viewpoint character is wrong, plow right ahead.  But be warned: it’s a tricky thing to do.  If you do it wrong, you run the risk of readers thinking that you, the author, are an idiot.  You need to either make the ‘wrong’ story believable enough that the audience can share in the MC’s confusion, or you need to make it clear that the MC can be wrong about stuff, preferably by showing her be wrong about stuff.  Not, say, assume right off the bat that people are evil or good, then have her assumptions be 100% correct.

Or you need to be okay with readers thinking you’re an idiot for most of the book.  I guess that’s an option, too.

Or none of that applies here, and Erudite really is evil, and the author is just an idiot.

Let’s keep reading and see which one is right.

“I am looking for someone,” I say. “His name is Caleb. Do you know where I can find him?”

“I am not permitted to give out personal information,” he replies blandly, as he jabs at the screen in front of him.

“He’s my brother.”

“I am not permi—”

I slam my palm on the desk in front of him, and he jerks out of his daze, staring at me over his spectacles. Heads turn in my direction.

“I said.” My voice is terse. “I am looking for someone. He’s an initiate. Can you at least tell me where I can find them?”

Now Tris also doesn’t believe in privacy or protecting personal information!  Awesome! 

Anyway, Caleb finds her, so we don’t have to see how far she’d go in beating the information out of this poor gentleman here.

Across from Erudite headquarters is what used to be a park. Now we just call it “Millenium,” and it is a stretch of bare land and several rusted metal sculptures

Um…and that makes it not a park?

Caleb acts all cagey and not happy to see her, because it’s breaking the rules.  …somehow.  Which rule?  Are factions not allowed to mingle at all, or is this an initiate-specific rule?  Or do they just not like people mixing in faction compounds, and you have to go to neutral ground for that?

Caleb is nervous because there’s something big going on, and his new faction is always talking about how corrupt Abnegation is.  Tris gets all upset over that, and Caleb points out that they didn’t really know anything about their old faction; they weren’t allowed to ask questions.  Tris assumes that everyone in Erudite is a lying, manipulating liar-face and they by default can’t be trusted.  Because…everything they’ve said so far has been true (or as true as they can make it, false witnesses not withstanding), but that means they’re lying liar-faces. 

Tris gives him their mother’s message about researching the simulation serum, then storms off in a huff, presumably because her brother is making too much sense and her puny excuses can’t stand up to basic logic.  But on her way out, two Erudite dudes stop her and make her go with them.

The two…guards? take her back to the library and up to an office to see Jeanine.  When she talks, Tris suddenly realizes that Jeanine is the person she heard talking to Eric right before she got kidnapped.

She is the danger Tori and my mother warned me about, the danger of being Divergent. Sitting right in front of me.

Oh for the love of Pete…  Really?  Her?  This one single person?  Not, oh I don’t know, Eric?  Or possibly the entire system?  You’re going to boil everything down to one single person, and the smart female person at that?

Fuck you, book.

Jeanine is interested in her because two of her simulations weren’t recorded (her aptitude test, and that one torture session where she broke the glass tank).  Tris starts thinking all highly of herself for figuring out that Jeanine is just fishing for Divergent information, but…really?  It wasn’t that hard to figure out.

Also, if these are the same people who tossed Tori’s brother down the chasm and made it look like an accident/suicide, then why are they bothering?  Just chuck that girl off a building.  She’s already shown a proclivity for doing that on her own.  I don’t think anyone will question it too hard.  And you’re already murdering people; it’s not like you need viable proof before murdering more people.

Tris makes up some lies to explain the unrecorded test results, then claims she hates her old faction and believes all the reports.  So…Jeanine just lets her go?  Huh, not so smart after all.

They drive her back to her own compound in a solar-powered car.  Seriously, a solar-powered car.  Why does everyone not have solar powered cars?  Or do they?  Is the whole city running on solar power now?  But if that’s so, then why did the concept of solar power have to be explained to Tris?

Is Abnegation keeping solar power from the city?

At the Dauntless home, Eric is there to receive her and scold her. 

For the first time, I recognize Eric for what he is: an Erudite disguised as a Dauntless, a genius as well as a sadist, a hunter of the Divergent.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.  Now we’re putting every single bit of evil on the Erudite?  Even Dauntless’s evil bits are going that way?  Eric hasn’t even done anything all that smart, much less genius.

Eric demands to know why she ‘betrayed’ her faction by going to visit a different one.  Really, all she did was visit.  It’s not like she sold faction secrets to them or anything. 

When even visiting someone from a different faction is considered ‘betrayal,’ you are sitting on an unstable explosive, ready at any moment to blow into full-fledged war.  This isn’t Erudite’s fault.  This is all y’all’s fault.  This is something that shouldn’t even still be around.  This should have devolved into gang-war a long time ago.

Tobias comes in, and they spin some lie about how he rejected her romantic advances, so she ran off because she was embarrassed and confused, nothing else.  Um…how is that any better than “I got bored and wanted to go a-visiting”?  Neither the truth nor the lie involves any actual change of allegiance, so what the fuck?

Tobias comes out to chat with her afterwards and assure her that he still likes her, even though he yelled at her, because Tris is just such a delicate little flower that she can’t take being chastised.  Then they agree to meet up again later.

Is this chapter over yet?  It’s been going on forever.

She goes to talk to Christina, and they gush over how Will kissed her and they’re a couple now.  Then Christina admits that she sorta-kinda almost misses her old faction.

You always know where you stand with everyone, because they tell you. There’s no…manipulation.”

Right.  Because it’s absolutely impossible to manipulate anyone with the truth.  Only lies can do that.

Oh, if only.

“I don’t think I could have made it through Candor initiation, though.” She shakes her head. “There, instead of simulations, you get lie detector tests. All day, every day.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA*wheeze*HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAA!

Guys, a little inside info.  Do you know why lie detectors aren’t allowed as legal evidence in a courtroom?  It’s because they suck.  Seriously, they are only slightly better at telling the truth than a coin flip.  They’re awful.  Worst of all, they tend to draw people into a false sense of security, because they figure that if someone’s been through the lie detector, then they’re clean.  That’s not the case at all.

You don’t even have to be trying to beat it.  I’ve been subjected to a lie detector.  Know what happened?  The machine recorded every answer as identical.  It couldn’t tell the lies from the truth.  My proctor said that instead of recording as calm and even at any point, the results were more like “constant lie.”  Even when I said the truth.  Even when I said “yes” to “is the sky blue?”  Even when I wasn’t talking at all.  And that was without any attempt at manipulation or any preparation.  The guy told me my results weren’t even that usual.  He had to, in the end, pass me because he just “figured” that I wasn’t lying. 

Really.  These things suck donkey balls.

Later that night, Tris goes to meet Tobias, and he has her get on the train with him.  For more teenaged make-outs, it seems.

Tobias points out the Erudite compound in the distance, which has all the lights on, despite rules to turn the lights off at night.  He wonders what they’re doing that they need lights all night.

Um…maybe they just use their handy solar power to stay up late reading?  Or having parties, since I bet they have all the chemists and can mix up some killer booze and tricks.

Tobias tells her that he was looking through records and stuff and…somehow broke into secure files…um, by accident?  Yeah, never says why he was going through that.  Anyway, he found some files that indicate the Erudite want to go to war against Abnegation and use the Dauntless as soldiers to do it.

Dun, dun, dun.

Who the fuck would the Dauntless fight?  Why do they even need a war?  It’s not like the Abnegation have a stockpile of guns and a fortified location.  Just round up a few beefy guards, head on over, and put the officials in jail.  Why must you complicate everything?