America lays in bed, wondering who will get axed from the now-pointless competition today.

If anything, I wished Celeste would go.  Maybe Maxon would send her home since he knew how much I disliked her, and he did say he wanted me to be comfortable here.

And…yet you’re not going to actually bring this up to him, are you?

Maxon actually doesn’t know how much America dislikes the girl, because she’s not told him.  She keeps all Celeste’s faults to herself, and the one time she tried to tell Maxon, she poured it all out badly and made it look like she was inventing drama, so he didn’t listen.  Yet instead of explaining and talking about things, America here just expects Maxon to know stuff and act according to her unspoken wishes.

It’s pretty bad when your main character doesn’t even have enough agency to talk about what she wants.

Oh, but her impending engagement isn’t going to stop her from thinking about Aspen, too.

Thankfully, her maids show up to move things along.  They politely kick May out of the room and hint that something important is about to happen, but they can’t tell America what. They act all nervous and dress her in a black outfit, then send her out to where the other girls are waiting and similarly dressed.  Except Marlee is missing.

They all go outside where there’s a big, cheering crowd waiting.  America sees implements of torture set out, but doesn’t put two and two together.  Instead she thinks that the cheering crowd means everything is okay.

Yup, you guessed it before the main character: Marlee and Woodwork get dragged out, already beaten and dirty.  They’re charged with treason, but the…masked man?  Really?  They’ve got a hooded executioner?  My god, book, what is wrong with you?  Well, the masked non-executioner says that Maxon spared them a lesser punishment of being made Eights and caned.

This is all so…archaic.  In theory, I don’t object to it happening.  This is supposed to be dystopia, so having harsh punishments for crimes fits.  It’s just the tone of all this that’s so weird.  Like, why is only this crime being harped on?  Why, in an otherwise “modern” setting, are they having public whippings in front of the palace?  It’s such an utter disparity in aesthetics that makes it stand out in awkward instead of meaningful ways.  You can keep the concept of harsh punishment, even harsh physical punishments, without dredging up medieval imagery.  And, in fact, an author needs to update these things because this is set in the future.  Any society that’s future-set needs to at least pay lip-service to the past, aka our present.  Which means that shit like this isn’t going to fly, because we have it built into our social identity that this is barbaric.  Modern societies like to pride themselves on being better than the past, so backsliding like this would make people say “now hold up a tic, what?”  Especially since the rest of the book seems to be devoted to keeping a veneer of governmental legitimacy.

And it’s just so unnecessary.  This could have been accomplished with a kangaroo court and kept the appearance of a legal process.  They could have been stripped of rank and sent to jail, where everyone knows beatings happen but they kind of ignore it.  (You know, like our own prison system.)  There’s plenty of ways to make this idea work without making your readers roll their eyes in the process. 

Back to the story.  America, to her credit, loses her shit as the caning starts and screams at Maxon to make it stop, even while everyone around her is trying to get her to sit down.  She fights some of the guards off and makes a run for Marlee, but more guards show up and drag her inside. 

I have to admit, for all it’s an utterly ridiculous situation, it’s nice to see some life and caring from our main character.  And even though she picks up on things far too late, the emotions of her nervous anticipation and her frenzied panic are done well.  This author can write, it’s just the things she decides to write about are…disjointed.