Divergent Chapters 10 - 18
Tris finds her bed vandalized and suspects Peter. Al helps Tris clean up her bed and expresses his regret about hitting Will. He tells her that he doesn’t like hurting people. Tris learns that she’s going to be paired against Peter for her fight. Al suggests that she concede the fight early on, but she decides to fight seriously in the hope of doing well on the rankings. Peter overwhelms her with a flurry of punches that causes her to pass out. She wakes up in the nurses’ station with her friends around her. Al reveals they have a field trip to the fence the next day. Tris understands that Al likes her, but she finds him to be a little too sensitive. She is worried that her parents will be too angry at her to see her on Visitation day. She leaves the hospital in the middle of the night and returns to her dorm.
Tris and Christina barely make it to the train due to Tris’s injuries. She doesn’t like Peter knowing that he has injured her so severely, and she finds herself looking at Four more often than she would like. Once they arrive at the fence, Four explains that low-ranked Dauntless initiates usually become fence guards, which worries Tris. She doesn’t want to end up on the fence or rank so badly that she doesn’t even get offered a place on the fence. Four tells them that he had gone through the initiation at the top of his batch, but that he had forgone the government job that the top initiate is generally offered. This piques her interest, and she meets her friend Robert, an Amity transfer, who is driving an Apple truck. He suggests she could return to Abnegation after seeing her injuries, but she refuses. Four reprimands Tris for her unwise decisions as he catches her talking to the truck driver, and he insinuates that he had been unable to watch her fight because he didn’t want to see her getting hurt.
The initiates are woken up in the middle of the night, they are told to dress and then escorted to the train tracks. The initiates are divided into two teams for a game of capturing the flag, a Dauntless Tradition. Eric and Four separate the group into two, Four chooses small and quick initiates like Christina, and Triss, while Eric chooses the more burlier initiates. Tris climbs a Ferris wheel to spot the other team and realizes Four is afraid of heights when he follows her to the top. She is impressed by his ability to overcome his fear, and the two of them spot the other team from a distance. On their way down, Tris nearly falls to the ground but Four saves her by quickly climbing down and turning the Ferris wheel. Tris plans an attack against Eric’s team and sends out a group to distract the other team. She finds the flag with her group which includes Christina. Tris lets Christina take the flag on her suggestion, further impressing the rest of the team.
Eric, upset from losing the game, announces the end of the first training stage and initiates a knife-throwing exercise. Tris excels, even though Peter mocks her practice, and Al struggles to land a single hit on the target. Eric orders Al to pick up a fallen knife, while the others are still practicing, but Al refuses to listen to him. Eric decides to punish Al by making him stand in front of the target while Four hits the target with his knives. Four is against the punishment, but Eric reminds him that he is their leader. Tris, annoyed at Eric’s behavior volunteers to stand in front of the target instead of Al. Four hits the target with all of his throws but his last throw nicks her side. Eric is impressed with Tris, but she refuses to acknowledge his appreciation. She worries that she has shown her divergence by displaying her abnegation qualities. She later accuses Four of hurting her intentionally, but he retorts that she should be thanking him for saving her.
The day before Visiting Day, Tris finds her clothes no longer fit due to her training. She attempts to retrieve a different set of clothes from her dorm. Tris goes to her room by covering herself with a towel. In the dorm, she’s mocked and embarrassed by Peter, Molly, and Drew. They steal her towel and ridicule her body by calling her child-like. She returns to the shower naked and crying. She decides on revenge. She changes into her training clothes and goes to attend the sparring match. She hopes to be paired off against Peter, but she’s assigned to fight Molly. Tris beats her aggressively and without mercy. She kicks Molly until she begins to bleed, at which point, Four intervenes, and wrestles Tris away from Molly.
On Visiting Day, Tris’s mother visits and reveals that Erudite has banned Abnegation members from their compound so she hasn’t been able to visit Caleb. She apologizes for her father not coming, and calls him selfish, much to Tris’s surprise. She sees Four and introduces herself to him. She claims that she’s seen him once before. Four speaks highly of Tris’s performance in her training so far, and they meet Al’s relatives who haven’t yet been able to find Al. They also run into Will’s sister who explodes at Tris’s mother as she accuses Abnegation of hoarding food. Tris’s mother drags her into a deserted hallway, advises her to stay in the middle of the rankings, and asks her to convince Caleb to research the test simulation serum. As she is leaving, Tris realizes her mother must have been from Dauntless before she married Tris’s father.
Tris finds Al in the dorm, he is avoiding his family due to his poor performance in training. He opens up to Tris about his conflict with hurting people and tries to hug her, but Tris moves away. At dinner, the initiates discuss the next day’s rankings and their aptitude test results. Four informs them of the ranking with Edward at the top, followed by Peter, and Tris places sixth out of nine initiates. She is surprised by her rank and notes that Al has ranked at the bottom of the rankings and so he is likely to be expelled from Dauntless. That night, Tris and Beatrice find that Edward has been stabbed in the eye with a knife. They help Edward and agree that the culprit must have been Peter. They decide not to tell anyone since they have a way of proving their accusation. The following morning, two initiates quit the training voluntarily and Al is saved from being expelled.
The next day, Tris joins a group of Dauntless-born initiates, including Uriah, who had been on her capture the flag team, for an initiation ritual that involves zip-lining from the 100th floor of the Hancock building. She enjoys the experience, and earns the respect of her fellow initiates. During the experience, she becomes jealous of a girl called Shauna, who tells her that she had been in initiate training with Four. He had taught her to fight while everyone else slept.
In the second stage of training, Four administers a serum that causes Tris to experience a hallucination that is meant to help her control her fears. During the simulation, Tris is attacked by a flock of crows and she manages to exit the hallucination by calming down. Tris feels broken by the experience and she begins to think of herself as a failure. Four comforts her, takes her away from the training room and compliments her for exiting the hallucination three minutes faster than anyone else. Tris is surprised by how difficult the initiation process is to get through. Four explains that the Dauntless training methods became quite brutal six years ago. Four refused the leadership position he was offered because he didn’t agree with the changes, and that was when the leadership role was given to Eric.
Analysis
Tris, the protagonist in “Divergent”, is navigating her new life in the Dauntless faction and metamorphosing to better suit her environment. She’s growing braver, demonstrated through her standing up to Eric’s somewhat cruel leadership style and even offering to take Al’s place in a dangerous task. Her body is changing too, becoming stronger and tougher, helping her survive the challenges of initiation and bullying from other initiates. During a visit from her mother, Tris is reminded of her dual existence as a child and an emerging adult. She’s eager to show her independence, yet she misses her family. Her mother’s visit reveals more about her parents’ complex personalities and their relationship, showing Tris that they are not just selfless parents but also individuals with their concerns. This is another crucial realization for her as she grows to become an adult.
Tris is surprised to learn that her mother was once a Dauntless member and knows about the faction’s training procedures. This revelation, along with her mother’s awareness of Tris’s Divergent status, shows Tris that there’s much she doesn’t know about her parents and adult relationships in general.
