Chapter Twenty

This chapter focuses on Tris' divergence. She faces the simulation again, this time, to conquer a fear of drowning--but also a fear of humility. She is encased in a tank and forced to drown in front of a passive-faced Dauntless born and transfer initiates. The family that is meant to accept her and embrace her now shuns her and watches her fall. In which, I see some major foreshadowing to a certain mindless movement.

Anyway, Tris gets ahold of herself, remembering that she is in a simulation and manipulates the result. She pounds on the glass and it breaks—she neither calms down nor faces her fear, she, instead, avoids it.  “I’m not trying to get their attention anymore, I’m trying to break the glass. I am frantic, desperate, to get out. I raise my fist and slap it against the wall as hard as I again, over and over again.” Chapter 22 of the Tao Te Ching strongly insists that too much offense will not gain a person anything—that peace of mind is achieved through both letting go and surrendering, but this isn’t something Tris knows. Regardless of religion I think there’s truth in,

“If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.”

Constantly taking or giving will leave someone exhausted, distraught—it will destroy a human being, and this is something that I think is shown quite nicely throughout the first and second book. Anyway, back to the chapter at hand: Four accuses her of Divergence immediately and she can hardly lie. He says he’ll hide her simulation result but warns of her the dangerous gift she possesses.

Though I didn’t test as Divergent in our class ranking, I am a lucid dreamer, so I know how Tris feels to a large extent. Nothing sucks worse than being able to feel what isn’t necessarily possible, and I wouldn’t be one to go barging into it either.

Hurt by his abruptness and seeking answers, Tris goes to Tori and asks her about Divergence. We learn that George Wu, a former transfer was whacked for his Divergent abilities, though it made him a better fighter and more fearless than most. She warns Tris to be on her toes--that she is being watched. And, thus, the plot thickens.