Allegiant Chapter 23
The chapter opens with Fourbias reading a note from Nita asking him to meet her. I’m really not sure what Nita’s game is (or her purpose in the story – is it to serve as a potential threat to Tris/Fourbias? It is to take the book to new, even more boring heights?)
“I look at Tris’s cot. She’s sprawled on her back, and there is a piece of hair covering her nose and mouth that shifts with each exhale. I don’t want to wake her, but I feel strange, going to meet a girl in the middle of the night without telling her about it. Especially now that we’re trying so hard to be honest with each other.
I check my watch. It’s ten to eleven.
Nita’s just a friend. You can tell Tris tomorrow. It might be urgent.”
With that very convincing thought, Fourbias heads off to meet Nita. Who is his friend that he’s talked to all of two times.
Nita takes Fourbias to see the “Chicago family trees”, which is just an excuse for Fourbias to list minor characters and their family members. I can honestly say that in a book where fucking nothing is happening, this is one of the most useless things that could have been included. Why not also include a detailed blueprint of Tris’ old house in the Abnegation sector? I need details like where Tris’ toilet was in order to experience the full richness of this universe.
Fourbias points out that this is cool and all (it isn’t), but why was this so very urgent? Turns out Nita really wants to talk about the fact that she doesn’t think that just because they’re “damaged” doesn’t mean they should have limits. Given we still have yet to see how Fourbias and Nita are actually any fucking different than Tris (other than the fact that they’re just different people to begin with), this feels a lot like arguing that chocolate ice cream should have chocolate in it. NO SHIT.
“There are a lot of secrets in this place,” she says. “One of them is that, to them, a GD is expendable. Another is that some of us are not just going to sit back and take it.”
“What do you mean, expendable?” I say.
“The crimes they have committed against people like us are serious,” Nita says. “And hidden. I can show you evidence, but that will have to come later. For now, what I can tell you is that we’re working against the Bureau, for good reasons, and we want you with us.”
Nita wants to show Fourbias what it’s like outside the compound, but he can’t tell Tris. But why can’t Tris know about all this, you ask? Let this convoluted and confusing explanation mesmerize you:
“I’m not saying she isn’t trustworthy. It’s just that she doesn’t have the skill set we need, and we don’t want to put anyone at risk that we don’t have to. See, the Bureau doesn’t want us to organize. If we believe we’re not ‘damaged,’ then we’re saying that everything they’re doing—the experiments, the genetic alterations, all of it—is a waste of time. And no one wants to hear that their life’s work is a sham.”
Oh my god, I feel like the book is acknowledging the fact THAT THIS WHOLE SERIES IS A WASTE OF TIME. Maybe? Too hopeful, I think. But seriously, it does seem like these experiments are incredibly pointless.
As they head out to meet Nita’s mystery friends, she tries really hard to emotionally connect/flirt with Fourbias by talking about his fear landscape and time in Dauntless. I really get the sense she’s been watching Fourbias all this time and become obsessed with him. Creepy! I’m sure it’s not actually meant to be, though.
Nita’s friends live on the outskirts of society, and it’s because even though everyone has the same rights “on paper” life is a lot shittier for the genetically damaged folks. I’ll spare you a quote of the very heavy-handed symbolism. Instead, I give you this:
“We’re here to see Rafi,” she says. “We’re from the compound.”
“You can go in, but your knives stay here,” the man says. His voice is higher, lighter than I expected. He could be a gentle man, maybe, if this were a different kind of place. As it is, I see that he isn’t gentle, doesn’t even know what that means.
Even though I myself have discarded any kind of softness as useless, I find myself thinking that something important is lost if this man has been forced to deny his own nature.”
How in fuck’s name has Fourbias determined all of this from not only one sentence BUT HIS VOICE ITSELF? SORCERY!
Plus, you could make this argument for literally anyone. Like I feel like I should have been born a billionaire because I feel like I’m denying my luxurious nature by not living in a mansion. Something important has definitely been lost because I’ve been forced to deny my nature. You could immediately glean this information about me if you just listened to the pitch of my voice for 10 seconds, I assure you.
Four is introduced to Mary and Rafi who are leading one group involved in the uprising.
Fatigue, a weight behind my eyes, creeps up on me suddenly. I have been a part of too many uprisings in my short life. The factionless, and now this GD one, apparently.
I have to sympathise with Fourbias here, it is kind of getting ridiculous. He needs to just be like, “I don’t care anymore, please lead me to the most delicious food you have here on the outside.”
Fourbias thinks that this place outside the compound is actually horrible – he sees a man beaten to death, and one of the guards is like, “That happens like every day here.” – but Nita insists it’s totally better than in a city because they’re sort of freer here.
“The Bureau talks about this golden age of humanity before the genetic manipulations in which everyone was genetically pure and everything was peaceful,” Nita says. “But Rafi showed me old photographs of war.”
I wait a beat. “So?”
“So?” Nita demands, incredulous. “If genetically pure people caused war and total devastation in the past at the same magnitude that genetically damaged people supposedly do now, then what’s the basis for thinking that we need to spend so many resources and so much time working to correct genetic damage? What’s the use of the experiments at all, except to convince the right people that the government is doing something to make all our lives better, even though it’s not?”
Yes, we get it book, people will always find reasons to separate themselves into groups, to marginalize people, to grant one group better treatment and power even when the differences are lies or completely imagined. Do you want a cookie?
Tris and Nita can’t figure out exactly what the point of everything is, why the government wastes so many resources on something completely pointless. So I end this chapter in exactly the same position I started in, giving absolutely no fucks.
I love your commentary 🙂
I also realized I did something similar to that whole separation of groups things as the motivation for my last antagonist. I might have to tweak that a bit… Thanks for the insight! (And the cookie!) (This might make me a masochist, but there’s a part of me that wishes someone like you could read my books before I try to query them…) 😉
Thank you! I’m really glad you’re enjoying 🙂
Oh no! Just because I don’t think the book is handling this well and is being too heavy-handed and also just plain “duh” about it, doesn’t mean that I think it’s an inherently bad point to make in a story. If a book is well written and interesting, with characters I give a crap about then I wouldn’t mind this. Especially if I got to come to conclusion on my own AND the whole book wasn’t just to be like “look at this concept, now look at this concept!”
I would definitely recommend you find a writers workshop. In my creative writing courses in college, people were just as snarky as me, if not worse. Believe me, everyone can’t wait to tear work apart!
Thanks so much for the advice! My antagonist does directly state it to the protagonist during his “villain’s rant” so thanks for the challenge to make it more subtle! 🙂
Yeah, I’ve been thinking about maybe joining a writers workshop. It’s funny. I don’t know how they work, so I’m reluctant to join and find out. Damn human nature… But if they’re filled with people who can find all the “doh!” moments, I think I need to investigate this.
It’s definitely hard to get used to at first because all the ones I’ve been in you’re not allowed to talk when your work is being critiqued so when someone misunderstands it because they read a line wrong or you know they clearly skim-read it right before the meeting it’s like araghhh but when people offer solid advice…if you’re open to it, it’s so rewarding! It also can be hilarious when you realize you wrote a really silly plot hole or absolutely cannot explain one of your characters motivations for doing something aside from “…because then it got another character to say this one line I really liked.”
You already can clearly think critically about your work, so I have a feeling you’d get a ton of value from it 🙂
Thanks so much! I’m getting excited about it now!
Keep me posted! I really hope if you do join one you enjoy it 🙂
I’m super late to the party here so I have no idea if you’ll actually see this (I’ve been busy), but I totally second everything Ariel’s said here. I took a similarly styled creative writing class where you weren’t allowed to talk when other people workshopped your story at first, and you could only come in about halfway through. It definitely got a little frustrating, but it does force you to shut up and listen and just take in what people thought of your story, and you can get great insight into what people got out of reading your work. I attempted to write a very abstract, absurdist story at one point in the semester and it was fascinating hearing people piece together an explanation that made sense to them – and it certainly surprised me when a bunch came to the conclusion that my main character’s main thing was “Ok, I get it! He’s TERRIFIED of sex!” I got a good laugh out of that. It was also super fun to hear how much hatred was in the room for the story’s token asshole.
So, yeah, workshopping your stuff! 10/10 two thumbs up!
Thanks! Wow, you guys make writers workshops sound like so much fun! And what a great way to test out how readers would respond. I definitely suffer from being too close to my writing; it’s so hard to imagine what connections real readers would draw. Okay, I’m definitely enrolling in a creative writing class or something 🙂 Thanks, guys!
(And that idea of an abstract story sounds like so much fun, especially when you get to kick back and watch people theorize about it.) 🙂
Writer workshops are awesome. If I weren’t in Japan right now, I’d join another one this summer. Just try to be open and not take any comments personally. And it should go great.
I show my work to one friend and sometimes family before I send it out (with the dumb exception of this last story I wrote, which I sent out before having my friend read it, and he picked out some fair flaws).
I never believed in creative writing classes. Try reading an Elmore Leonard novel and telling me a creative writing class would have helped him in the slightest.
Writing workshops aren’t a terrible idea insofar as they’re just vehicles for others to read your work.
Oh my gosh, no need to apologize to me! I’m in complete agreement. I read the line in the book a few times and was like, “Is he literally just assuming this ‘gentle nature’ because of the pitch of the man’s voice? What on Earth? I hadn’t even considered that being connected to a gay stereotype, which just makes the reading of that scene even worse! Unless you were upset with me for reading the scene that way? I didn’t take it that way, but otherwise I can’t imagine why you’d need to apologize to me for being rude, you definitely weren’t 🙂
Haha that’s a relief 🙂 This is a safe space for ranting against bad books, though, so I’m all for it. Especially when it’s also an attack against Fox News!
Down with Fox News !
Didn’t Roth have another gay stereotype in the second book with… was it Shawna or something? It’s quite possible it was meant to be here too. I didn’t think about that until you pointed it out. I wonder if that’s what Roth meant or if she was trying to say how good/nonviolent people are forced to become something they’re not in war. Although, I can think of other ways than a man’s voice to convey that… Like the beating of the man to death and the nonchalant guard…
Yeah, the one female character with a not traditionally feminine haircut revealed on her deathbed that she was a lesbian.
Roth’s book notes: “Especially short haircut…perhaps buzzed even…clearly signals lesbian character. Now how to subtly represent a potentially gay male character….”
Wow… yay for character deathbed confessions. (The real ones I’ve observed are more nonsensical rambling or swearing.) I don’t even think about my minor characters’ love lives.
I think that was Lynn.
Holy crap, how did you remember that? I’m writing summaries on this and I couldn’t remember.
Don’t feel bad. The only reason I even remembered is because I’m currently reading another chapter by chapter snark on Insurgent, and Lynn is definitely not supposed to be seen as traditionally feminine in any way.
So, basically, I cheated. Otherwise I would have no clue what you’re even talking about (what even happened last book? Last chapter? It’s all one big boring, gray blur)
We’ll be done soon, I swear. But what alarms me most is that we can barely slog through the book (even summaries of the book) but your reading multiple posts about these books. ARE YOU SECRETLY A DIVERGENT MOCKERY JUNKIE?
Where are you reading? It’d be fun for me to see how someone else snark blogged this book after we’re done
I’m gonna be honest. I remember very few of the characters’ names in these books.