Sunday, September 6, 2015

The End.....?



                               Is this the End???




           Initiation day comes, and the Dauntless compound is in chaos. When she mindlessly picks Abnegation food for lunch, Tris realizes that no matter what she does, she will always be Abnegation, and wonders again if she chose the wrong faction. But she's determined to focus only on what she has to do today, despite her misgivings. In the Pit, they can see the current initiate going through their landscape, though they can't see specifically what fears they face. 
           When Tris gets there, Marlene's test is on view. She then goes to the waiting room, and is told that she will go last, because she's ranked first. After everyone else goes, Eric injects her with the simulation. Her first fear is the field of crows again, and she realizes it isn't about the birds at all; it's about control. She knows she needs to feel powerful if she's going to get past this fear, and she feels most powerful with her gun. It appears, and she shoots the birds. Next is the glass tank full of water, and she realizes she must face her fear of weakness and an inability to escape. She convinces herself that she's strong enough to break the glass with her hands, and she does. Then she finds herself in an ocean, waves coming at her from every angle, and she loses control completely. She focuses hard and pulls herself out of the water and onto a nearby rock, and the scene changes again. Her arms and legs are bound by rope as the group of initiates, led by Peter, set a fire beneath her. She's terrified, but she focuses on the clouds above her and eventually it starts to rain. The scene changes again and she's in her bedroom in Abnegation, with one of her walls covered by mirrors. Outside is the man who appeared in her aptitude test, along with two other men, and they're there to kidnap and kill her. She hears more and more hands pounding at the window. She envisions her gun and then has it, and begins to shoot the men, but runs out of bullets too fast. She tries to calm down as they come at her, and she crawls into the closet and the scene fades. Suddenly Tobias is standing in front of her, and behind them is a four poster bed. He kisses her and begins to tug at her jacket zipper, and Tris realizes she fears intimacy and affection. She realizes the only way to stop this is to tell simulation-Tobias she isn't going to do that, then kisses him and he disappears. Then she's faced with the simulation in which she must shoot her family - and this time Jeanine is threatening her to do it. Remembering that Tobias said selflessness is similar to bravery, she shoots herself instead. Tris is back in the simulation room, and Eric congratulates her on completing her final assessment. He says he also must inject her with a tracking device, courtesy of Erudite. She's suspicious, but she knows she can't refuse. He tells her her ranking will be announced at the welcoming banquet with the other initiates. 
         Tobias comes up to Tris and says he wasn't allowed to watch the simulation, but he heard a rumor that she only had seven fears to face, and that the Dauntless leaders who watched were impressed. Then he invites her to come stay with him until the banquet, and she accepts. But when she goes back to his room with him, she's clearly unsettled; finally she asks him why he wants to be with her. She admits that he was an obstacle in her fear landscape, because she's afraid of being with him. Tobias insists that this is all new to him, too. They kiss, and he spots her new tattoo covered up. When Tris tells him it's the Abnegation seal, he says he has the same one on his back and shows her. His back is covered with tattoos, including the symbols of each faction. He tells her that he thinks they've all made a mistake in putting down the virtues of the other factions, because it's important to be all, not one.
          They head to the dining hall and meet Christina, and they discuss the jobs they'd like to have after initiation. Christina says she wants to train initiates, and Tris says she'd like to be an ambassador to the other factions. Peter and Will both want to be Dauntless leaders. Christina asks Tris why the Dauntless leaders were laughing during her fear landscape, and after Christina notices she's lying, she admits she's afraid of intimacy. Eric makes a speech, announcing that tomorrow their ten newest members will choose their professions. Then he reveals the rankings - Tris is first, followed by Uriah, Lynn, Marlene, Peter, Will, Christina, and three other Dauntless-borns. Both Molly and Drew are cut. Tris and Tobias kiss, which makes Will and Christina stare.
         When Tobias touches the injection site on Tris's neck she realizes that the shot wasn't a tracking device at all. The serum they injected is how the Erudite plans to control the Dauntless and get them to fight. Tris doesn't get a chance to warn Tobias in the midst of all the excitement. She wakes in the middle of the night to a peculiar sight; everyone in the dorm is awake and moving robotically, like they're sleepwalking. They start to leave the dorm, moving in unison, so Tris joins them and does the same to blend in. They march into the Pit, where the Dauntless leader Max watches them. They all pick up guns, and she realizes that the injections they received yesterday make them brain-dead soldiers, ready to kill. 
          As they march, she makes a pact to get to the Abnegation sector and save her family, whatever it takes. The Dauntless leaders are all awake, watching. Tris realizes that she must be awake because she's Divergent, so if her suspicions about Tobias are true, he will be awake as well. She spots him in the train car and at first thinks he's under the simulation like everyone else, but then he discreetly squeezes her hand and she knows the truth. They get to the Abnegation sector, and war begins with gunshots. One by one more and more Abnegation drop dead. They pass by Eric, and he pokes at Tris's injection site, remarking on how insane it is that none of them can process anything that's occurring. He puts a trigger to Tobias's head, planning on "accidentally" shooting him, but Tris pulls out her own gun and points it at Eric's head immediately. 
        While trying to get away, Tris is shot in the shoulder, and they're surrounded by Dauntless soldiers. They're led into Abnegation headquarters, where they're presented to Jeanine as Divergent rebels. She says she expected this of Tris, but Tobias being Divergent surprised her, since there were no signs. She says she thinks it's because his Divergence is weaker, and he really does belong in Abnegation. She says she wants to test another batch of the simulation on them to see if they can still resist. She also questions why all the Divergent seem to be from Abnegation. She explains her plans: she wants to overthrow the Abnegation administration, and she promised the Dauntless leaders a place in her new government. She wants the remains of Abnegation to be absorbed into the Dauntless army. She returns again to the problem of Divergence, and says she's created a new serum that will adjust their surroundings to manipulate their will. Tobias will be the first test subject, but Jeanine says Tris is too injured to be of use, so she will be executed in the morning. Tobias says he would rather die, but of course, Jeanine tells him he doesn't have a choice. He kisses Tris and then lunges across the desk and wraps his hands around Jeanine's throat, which makes the Dauntless guards jump at him.
          Jeanine sticks Tobias with a syringe, and he falls under the simulation. He thinks Tris is an enemy rather than a friend, and tries to strangle her. They're both taken to separate rooms, and when Tris fights back, the guard knocks her unconscious. She wakes in the corner of a huge tank, still bleeding. There's a tube in the floor, and she realizes with a jolt of panic that she could drown in this tank, one of her worst fears. She screams and pounds on the glass as water begins to trickle in. It rises, and she tries to force herself to remain calm and breathe. As she's beginning to drown, someone comes in and breaks the glass with a bullet, and she realizes it's her mother. Dauntless guards lie dead at the door. Natalie Prior was indeed Dauntless. Her mom says that her father and Caleb are safe and hiding in a basement, and that she had been keeping an eye on the trains since the attacks started. Tris tries to get over the shock of her mother's hidden past, but then Mrs. Prior reveals that she's Divergent also, and she was only safe because her mother was a Dauntless leader who told her to switch to a safer faction. 
            She explains that the Divergent are terrifying to the leaders of the factions because their minds move in different directions, therefore they can't be controlled, so they must be obliterated. As they're moving to the basement location, a group of Dauntless soldiers gain on them. Mrs. Prior tells Tris to go to the basement in the alley on the right and knock a certain number of times to get in while she distracts the soldiers. After telling Tris she loves her, Mrs. Prior runs straight at the soldiers and fires at them, getting hit in the abdomen in the process. She falls to the ground and dies; she has sacrificed herself so that Tris can escape.
            The Dauntless soldiers chase Tris, and fires at them. Tris is horrified to realize that Will is among them. She hesitates, but his gun is pointed at her, so she does the only thing she can and shoots him in the head. His smiling face appears in her mind as she screams and sobs, realizing what she's done. But she makes it to her family's hideout, knocks on the door, and Caleb appears. He's wearing gray again, not Erudite blue. They hug and he takes her inside to deal with the gunshot wound in her shoulder. There are a handful of Abnegation there, including Marcus Eaton. But the pain in her shoulder is pressing. 
            Caleb explains that he researched the simulation serum like their mother told him and found out what Jeanine was planning, and dropped out of Erudite initiation at once. Her father asks where her mother is, and Tris admits quietly that she sacrificed herself. Marcus says their safest bet is to go to the Amity compound. He asks Tris about the Dauntless strategy, and she explains that they have none; they're being completely mind controlled and have been sleepwalking through the entire battle. Tris decides that the only way to end this is to wake the Dauntless up, and to do that they need to find the computer program that controls the simulation and destroy it. She realizes it must be in the Dauntless control room, because that was where Jeanine sent Tobias. Caleb, Marcus, and Andrew Prior accompany Tris to Dauntless, and for everyone but Tris, jumping onto the moving train proves very difficult. Marcus assumes she now regrets choosing Dauntless, but Tris denies it, saying there were some things she needed to learn - including how to be selfless, as selflessness is bravery. 
             The group has to jump off the train onto a roof, just as Tris did on her first day as an initiate. Then they have to jump down onto the net, which predictably Caleb, Marcus, and Mr. Prior have trouble with. They sneak into the compound, but someone begins to shoot at them, and Tris realizes that the guard is Peter. He's awake, and when Tris puts a gun to his head and asks him why, he says the Dauntless leaders evaluated his records and removed him from the simulation. With the gun still at his head, she asks him where the computers that control the simulation are. When he refuses, she shoots him in the arm. He says the only way he'll tell her is if she takes him with her, because the Dauntless will kill him. They head for the glass building above the Pit, and Tris and her father argue over whether or not she had the right to shoot someone. Tris says that violence is necessary to ensure their safety, and watches as she shoots at the next set of guards. Finally there's only one guard left, and when Tris has two guns pointed at him, he jerks his chin to the side, telling her to go. She realizes he must be Divergent. She gives everyone the all-clear and tells Caleb and Marcus to stay and watch Peter, then goes off in the elevator with her father.  Both Tris and her father shoot at the guards and then advance. However, Mr. Prior is shot in the stomach and slumps to the floor. Helpless, Tris watches her father die. 
             Tris is devastated, but she knows she has to keep going. She makes it to the control room, which consists of a wall covered with screens showing different scenes in the city. In front of a screen streaming code sits a Dauntless soldier - Tobias. Tobias, still stuck in the simulation that makes him think Tris is his enemy, tells Tris to drop her weapon or he'll fire. She does, but he continues to command her to, unaware that she already has. She refuses to shoot him and instead continues to say his name, because she knows he's in there somewhere. He begins to falter, and she knows she can't kill him. She thinks of her father's words, that there is power in self-sacrifice, and places the gun in Tobias's hands. He presses it against her forehead, and she's prepared to die. There is no shot. Tobias stares at Tris. Knowing he's fighting the simulation, she wraps her arms around him, and he drops the gun, says her name, and kisses her: it's him again. Tris asks how he was able to break out of the simulation, but he says he doesn't know; he just heard her voice.
             They look at one of the screens and see Dauntless soldiers surrounding Marcus, Caleb, and Peter, and Tobias runs to the code screen and taps it a few times, and then all the sudden the soldiers go still. Tobias extracts the data to make sure the simulation can't be run again. They return to the group and Caleb runs at her the moment the elevator reaches the ground, and when he asks about their dad and she shakes her head, says he would've wanted it that way, anyway. Tris realizes she didn't warn Tobias about Marcus, and when Marcus sees him, he tries to wrap his arms around him, which makes Tobias wince. Tris warns him to stay away from Tobias, because she knows the Erudite report about him was true. 
            It's time for the group to get out of Dauntless fast, and they decide to take the train to the Amity compound to catch up with the others who escaped. Tris thinks about all the people she loves, all her friends out there somewhere just freed of the simulation. She knows Christina will find Will's body, and never forgive Tris for shooting him. On the train, she tells Tobias that her parents died today, and died for her, and Tobias says to them, there was no better way to show they loved her. He asks why Tris didn't shoot him, and she says because it would've been like shooting herself. The novel ends with Tobias telling Tris he might be in love with her, and Tris pulls out the hard drive with the simulation data and sees Marcus staring at it greedily. Tris knows their battle has just begun. 

      "Can I be forgiven for all that I've done to get here?" (Roth, 476)

I can't say I love this quote, but I also can't say I don't. It shows what Tris feels and that she realizes her errors, that to me, is a brave thing to do. We can tell that Tris is being puzzled, confused and messed with because all her emotions and thoughts are combined. Tris feels like she doesn't deserve anything and that her mistakes are the worst kind, which she's wrong. Everybody makes mistakes, everybody can be forgiven. It wasn't Tris's fault that she shot Will, she was under so much pressure that she couldn't get the hang of things, she just let go. And I can relate to that.


      "I am no longer Tris, the selfless, or Tris, the brave. I suppose that now, I must become more than either" (Roth, 487)

 I have to say, this is my favourite quote in the entire book. Tris is now fully developed and understands what is going on. She can feel that she is Divergent, something she can't change, something that they can't control. Tris knows that, now, she is much more than being brave or selfless or smart, she is Divergent. Tris accepts that she can't be brave and selfless, she has to be more. She can't be one thing while she is the other. Tris is more, Tris is Divergent.




                               This can't be it!

Unfortunately, all things come to an end. It was fun to see all of the characters progression and development. I enjoyed reading this book, especially because it is appealing to me. Roth can actually make me relate to Tris and her trouble as a teenager. The factions are broken, the system is broken. Nothing will be the way it was before and nothing will be going the way that they want it to be, both. Tris has become much more than just being part of a faction, Tris has become Divergent, and I can't wait to read Insurgent!

















No comments:

Post a Comment