After the group picks their new leaders, an intercom comes on announcing to the whole building that Jack has decided to capitulate to all of Erudite’s demands. He sounds very defeated as he announces it.

One thing Dauntless knows that Candor does not is how to fight even when fighting seems useless.

Do they, though? The book keeps going on in this vein, and every time it comes up, I wonder. How badass are the Dauntless? Or rather, how badass can they reasonably be given this set up? There actually doesn’t seem to be a lot in their lifestyle geared towards toughening them up or enduring hardships. They guard a fence that no one wants to break, do stunts, then they go home and eat cake. How does that sort of a lifestyle lead to any of the claims that Tris keeps making about them? From all appearances, they don’t even do any training beyond the initial stuff, and none of that is organized enough to produce the kind of mindset that Tris keeps claiming.

The book wants these guys to be hardened soldiers, but it hasn’t set up for that to be a possibility. They’re not. They’re fucking mall cops.

Sometimes I feel like I am collecting the lessons each faction has to teach me, and storing them in my mind like a guidebook for moving through the world.

This would have more of an impact if you didn’t spend all your time thinking about how the other factions are so very wrong in everything they do, while Dauntless is only wrong sometimes (until you forget about it, at least).

Anyway, the Dauntless get up in arms over Eric being turned over, so they run off to go take care of him post haste.

They find him…in a chair…somewhere? IDK, there’s a scene shift and suddenly the whole half-a-faction is standing around Eric. Was he just left here? Did they have to fight/argue off a bunch of Candor that were watching him? What?

Eric taunts them a little, including potshots at Tris being a prude, which just seems really out of the blue. The only time sex is mentioned is when people are making fun of Tris for not having it, but…there’s actually no sign of sexuality being as big a deal in this book as it is in our world, so it just stands out awkwardly. Sort of like the little girl idea. It’s just weird.

“Fair enough.” His dark eyes are empty, like pits, like starless nights. “But do you have the right to decide that [I should die], Beatrice Prior? Like you decided the fate of that other boy—what was his name? Will?”

This is a fair thing to bring up in a book like this – the plot certainly has room for it and it would flow out of events that have already happened – but…well…it hasn’t been in this book so far. In fact, for all that Tris has been hung up on killing Will, she hasn’t had a single moral problem with killing anyone else, either in the past or in her current actions. She’s fine with just running off into violence again. And, frankly, I’m okay with that, there’s many ways to react to stuff. But like the sex thing, that makes this stand out very awkwardly.

I guess you could argue that it’s just Eric grasping at straws and not meant to be a thing. But I’m on a tangent now so I’m going to keep going. Because I see this in a lot of other works, too, and it’s given about as much thought and context, but meant to be taken seriously. And frankly, I’m kind of sick of it. Because it’s so cheap, and because everyone goes for the obvious answer of “no, don’t kill people!” Okay, you don’t want to encourage teens to murder, cool, but maybe put a bit more thought into your arguments? Especially since these are some pretty unique circumstances. That’s always the part that gets me, the fact that it’s treated as a blanket statement and there’s never any discussion about variables and circumstances, or any good arguments for the other side. I mean, I know it sucks, but sometimes you get an option between “horrible” and “more horrible” and isn’t that a situation that’s worth giving some deep thought to? Rather than just black and white morality of “don’t shoot anyone ever for any reason”?

Tobias decides the conversation is over and that it’s legal to kill Eric here according to their faction laws. So he empties out three guns for some reason…

One by one, he empties the chambers of bullets. They almost jingle as they hit the floor, and then roll, coming to rest against the toes of Tobias’s shoes. He picks up the middle gun and puts a bullet into the first slot.

So, these people use revolvers? Now I’m stuck on a whole different tract of why they’re using revolvers. I mean, they’re not really that great for fast-action combat, since they have a smaller capacity and take much longer to reload. There’s not much in the way of history that I can tell, so you wouldn’t get people carrying them for the…er, nostalgia/history/collectable/history/coolness aspect. I guess, since all their weapons are made on-site by other Dauntless, they could have adopted the revolver as being easier to manufacture. Here, currently, pistols and revolvers are fairly equal in terms of reliability, but if you don’t have the same manufacturing capabilities as a modern facility, then it’s conceivable that revolvers would come back as the more reliable option.

I mean, it’s a completely superfluous argument going on in my head, because obviously the book just wants to play Russian Roulette, but I’m really curious now. I’d been picturing everyone using semi-auto pistols until now.

Anyway, they book wants to play Russian Roulette, so there’s three guns with one bullet and all of the three new leaders pick one. But then all of that is thrown out the window anyway, because Eric requests that Tobias be the one to kill him, so Tobias does.

And then…actually does. Cool, I was half afraid Eric was going to stick around just as long as pointlessly as Peter.