America is upset about the completely pointless magazine article telling her that public opinion is against her in a non-public-opinion contest that she doesn’t even want to win anymore.  Um…angsty?  Anyway, she runs and hides in her room, then decides to play the piano for a distraction.  Then she finds Gregory’s diary (remember that thing?) among the music where she hid it.

Why?  Why do we need to go through this convoluted mess?  Why can’t she just want to read the diary?  I’m so sick of seeing this in books, and it comes about in so many small ways.  Over and over and over again, girls will be tricked by the book into participating in the plot.  America can’t just read the book, she has to stumble across it after having forgotten about it.  Tris can’t want to go see her brother, she has to wait until an emotional outburst and convenience push her to it.  Clary can’t go looking for her mother’s cure, someone has to walk up and offer it.  What is the point of this?  It’s like authors are so determined to strip their characters of agency that they do it even down to the minute details level.

And nothing is gained by this!  Not a single blessed thing.  So why do it?

So she reads a bit of the diary, where Gregory bemoans the fact that the country got invaded because they were “lazy.”  If this was supposed to be social commentary, it fails miserably.  We aren’t a lazy country, not by a long shot.  It’s just that our industries are getting more intellectual and more efficient, so it takes fewer people and most of them sit down.  But we’re still doing shit.  We’re doing awesome shit.  We’re not so lazy and brain-dead that we wouldn’t notice a country about to fucking invade us.

And if you think that making twitter-facebook-cell phone zombie jokes to that effect means anything, remember this: people used to say the same thing about swing dancing and rock and roll. 

Aspen comes in later to play treason-roulette again, and America tells him about the article and how she’s just SO CONFUSED and having an existential crisis for some reason.  Apparently she doesn’t know who she is anymore, but that makes no sense.  No one has tried to change her or make her go against her personality or pressured her into acting contrary to her morals.  In fact, no one’s really asked much of anything from her.  All she’s had to do this whole time is stand there and…stand there.   How is that a challenge to her sense of self?

Aspen tells her she’s not calculating enough to be a royal.  He tells her that people in ‘the south’ were getting knocked down a caste for being rebel sympathizers.  Apparently this is a huge deal, but I’m not sure why.  I mean, they say “oh no, you’d not know how to do the new jobs or how to find work!” like it’s just the worst thing ever.  Book, you do realize that people in this world change jobs all the time, right?  It’s difficult, but not exactly shocking.  If there’s some other consequence to changing castes that would make that more of a challenge, you have to tell us that.  It doesn’t help that, as it stands, all we know about the differences between castes is the jobs, and that’s not much.

Then they get all sappy for a bit, because that’s all this book is.  A few pages of nonsensical attempts at politics, followed by gushy goop that doesn’t progress at all.  She remembers all over again (again) that Aspen is awesome and dedicated to her, because I guess she forgot from the last time she remembered that.  And the time before.  Maybe she should get checked out for memory loss, because this is starting to look like a serious problem.