Twenty-One

This chapter is a really tense one emotion wise! Rankings are posted for their current positions—Eric’s idea, I’m sure, and Tris is in first. Peter is far from happy, but everyone else suddenly feels threatened, too. I get that Peter does bad things, but when you think about it, he’s really the only one that views Tris as strong enough to pose a threat. He doesn’t see her as a child, he sees her as competition, and in a way that’s something kind of special since Al, Will, and Christina have all called her “little girl” at different times.  Peter is the only one who can look past her appearance and see the flames of Dauntless licking at her heels and he’s scared of it.

Will and Al try to question Tris’ intentions after Peter’s comments but she assures them that she’s their friend.  She can’t help her score—and this is true of life, as well. Sometimes people are just a bit quicker than others in some fields;  this, in itself, doesn’t make them arrogant, but they cannot control it when others compare themselves to them. Anyone who leads the pack in any field, regardless of the nature of the activity will be envied—that’s just how people work. Unfortunately, the price of being envied in the Dauntless compound might just be an optical organ.

She overhears Eric talking to some lady about finding “them” which can be inferred as Divergent, but our attention is quickly stolen by some kidnappers that grab Tris and drag her off to the chasm, Al included.

Okay, this is why I can validate liking Peter but not Al:

Peter is smart; he is systematic, he sees things for what they are. Sure, he might be a douche about it, but whatever, that’s true to the way we can assume he was raised. Al let’s himself be destroyed by Dauntless initiation. He becomes bad; losing yourself out of cowardice is much more disgusting than being born of bitterness.

Tl;dr: Al kind of sucks. At least Peter was always mean.

She smells his lemon-y scent and he backhands her before Peter dangles her over the chasm. If Four wasn’t out for a midnight stroll she could have died. The boys scatter, Al still sucks, and Four comes to the rescue. “I press my face into his shoulder and there is a sudden hollow silence.”

Something about this line was just relaxing—a good way to end it to match with an exhausted mindset.