Chapter Three

Beatrice is deemed Divergent which is something startling and unknown, and based on Tori's reaction, taboo. She is instructed to go home separately and keep this information to herself at all costs. She doesn't return to Caleb and decides to walk the whole way home to clear her head. This proves to be a less than intelligent decision because she's stopped by a factionless man and thus we are introduced to those who have been shunned from society.

I was honestly scared for Beatrice when he grabbed her wrist! I thought it was a little early on for something awful to happen to her, but you never know with these dystopian books--they like to kick you in the guts(CALEB AHEM), that's for sure. Either way, I really liked this scene in retrospect and for analysis. 

Beatrice must think for a moment about what a true Abnegation would do, and that is to offer a hungry homeless man food, but what she offers is an apple. This reference, in a biblical sense, is one of the 7 suspected "forbidden fruits" that led Eve astray from the garden of Eden. The apple is cut in slices, which is how the Roman Catholic church determined it to be an evil fruit in the first place (if cut correctly  the seeds make a sort of pentagram shape) but I think that this instead means that the temptation was cut to pieces, as if to deter Beatrice from falling victim.

Beatrice does not want to give the apple slices away; she wants to keep temptation close to her, which is hardly and Abnegation trait, but she gives them up anyway and for that she is met with consequence. The man, bigger, stronger, and from a rougher walk of life grabs her and can easily inflict harm and I think this true for later events. Beatrice acts selfishly (or Divergently) and this leads to the death of others and her own near demise several times; most of these are unavoidable but Beatrice consistently comes to blame herself for being "selfish" and "not good enough" and cuts her own self esteem down to next to nothing.

She struggles and can do nothing, smelling, "something acrid and unpleasant on his breath" I found it interesting that Roth chose this word of allllll of the thousands in the English language. Acrid itself doesn't just mean an unpleasant sensory response but angry, foul and bitter, three words which basically sum up what we know of the factionless thus far and for the majority of the book.

Beatrice then gets a Dauntless thought, delivered in a very systematic and Erudite manner but she cannot act on it. The man releases her, taking the apple slices with a simple and very ominous piece of advice,

"Choose wisely, little girl."