Chapter Eleven

Chapter eleven shows us Tris’ reactions to her first fight and miserable loss. Of course, Peter, who is twice her size, would have won at this juncture; no one has had enough time to become skillful (with the exception of Edward) and right now everyone is relying on natural physical endowment—of which, Tris Prior has none. She wakes feeling pretty awful, with which I can affiliate with, not from fist fights, but while learning certain dance moves last year I took a few awful tumbles. Not a fun time.

The motif of reflections surfaces again as Tris examines herself in the mirror, or rather, the girl she sees. She views herself as a separate entity than the bruised and battered blonde that she sees in the glass, though it doesn’t give description of what she should be; only what she is not. She is not a bruised girl, she does not let her hang back, she doesn’t have split lips—so on, and so forth. She’s dissociating herself because she does not belong in Dauntless any more than she did in Abnegation, or than she would in Erudite. She is divergent, yet she does not want to admit nor embrace this fact, leaving her reflections to be lacking for she only views the outside of her face at this juncture, refusing to look deeper.

Together the Dauntless initiates pack up and head to the city fence to talk about faction jobs, including gate patrol. Amity lies just outside and Tris happens to see a ghost of her past—Robert, the boy she most likely would have married had they both stayed in their grey landscapes. He hugs her and they speak briefly and we see that Tris’ speech has become hostile and sharp. She’s defensive with pretty much everyone because she feels that no one believes that she can survive initiation, that she is too small, too handicapped to succeed. I have handicaps of my own, more of circumstance than anything else, so I understand Tris’ frustration, but she really doesn’t hide it well. This was the first chapter where I felt a bit… “Eh,” toward her. This isn’t entirely odd of me, if a story is in first person I usually come to dislike them—they tend to be flatter in my opinion, and after reading the second book, I wouldn’t exactly call Tris flat… But messy. Not a real complaint, still a great book, and if you read it for a while you stop noticing, but when I come back to write blogs I notice little irksome qualities.

I digress.

Tris tells Robert in a rather condescending way, “My goal in life isn’t to just be… Happy.”

And he retorts gently, “Wouldn’t it be easier if it was?”

I don’t have anything in particular to say about this one, only that I’ve heard a life lived in pursuit of anything but happiness is a dark and empty one; I wonder if Tris will come to realize this and whether or not that would be good or bad.