Divergent Chapter 14 & 15: This is the first time I have actually felt like flipping a table while reading a book.

The next two chapters are rather short, so I'm recapping the both of them together. Which is a weird thing to say, considering I just split a chapter from City of Ashes in two because it was like forty pages long.

I'm going to put a trigger warning for sexual assault on this recap, just because Tris encounters a moment of it (I suspect that's why chapter fourteen is so short) and it's so clumsily handled that it made me want to throw up and that isn't really a trigger for me. So skip over this recap if that might bother you. Also, I guess I apologise for how serious this recap is, but it seemed irresponsible to not talk about how truly fucked-up and problematic (even though I loathe to use that word) the actions are in this part of the novel.

If it makes you feel better, try and imagine me as this while I was writing this recap:

We begin the chapter with Tris remembering that the next day is Visiting day as she's trying to pull on a pair of pants and discovering that she can't because, lo and behold, working out every day will give you thigh muscles. I'm serious, that's how the chapter opens:

I try to pull a pant leg over my thigh and it sticks just above my knee. Frowning, I stare at my leg. A bulge of muscle is stopping the fabric. I let the pant leg fall and look over my shoulder at the back of my thigh. Another muscle stands out there.

JEEZE ROTH, SLOW DOWN, THIS ACTION IS TOO FAST-PACED FOR ME.

It's time for Tris' weekly mirror assessment of herself, and it's every bit as boring as you could imagine. She wonders where the "layer of fat [that] used to hint at curves to come" went at her side, and I tuned out because I only have time to worry about one body a day and to be honest it's usually mine.

She walks into the dormitory in a towel to get another pair of pants (which is confusing since we were never told where she was or that she had just showered, just that she was getting dressed), and  the ickiness of this chapter begins:

Peter, Molly, Drew, and some of the other initiates stand in the back corner, laughing. They look up when I walk in and start snickering.
[ ... ]
I walk to my bunk [ ... ] and fumble in the drawer under my bed for the dress Christina made me get. [ ... ] I stand up, and right behind me is Peter.

I'm gonna lay this out real fucking clear: this is that plot device authors use to make characters Truly Evil because they cannot figure out another way to make it clear to their readers that they are. Plenty of men do this, and yes, it does ring in some sort of truth, but the fact that we cannot seem to figure out a way to make our male characters unsympathetic without throwing our female characters under the bus is a real problem. It is unnecessary (and frankly irresponsible) to force your, often YOUNG, readers to read this sort of violence against a woman's body over and over again.

And that's why I'm not going to recap the rest of this chapter and have combined it with the next-- all you need to know is that Peter gets uncomfortably close to her, prevents her from leaving, and eventually rips her towel away from her so she's naked.

People are going to try and tell me that this was a necessary action, to spur what happens for Tris in the next part of this chapter, and I am going to tell you that you are wrong. Revenge does not always need to be the reason your female characters do things-- sure, it's a powerful motive, but it's also the easiest, and easy characters mean lazy characters.

But we get to the core reason I am so unbelievably upset with this chapter right toward the end:

Four stands in front of the board and writes a name next to mine. Please let it be Peter, please, please...[ ... ] Four moves away from the board. The name written next to mine is Molly. Not Peter, but good enough.

Which leads to this:

She curls into a ball to protect her side, and I kick again, this time hitting her in the stomach. Like a child [she said]. I kick again, this time hitting her in the face. Blood springs from her nose and spreads over her face.
[ ... ]
I pull my foot back again, but Four's hands clamp around my arms, and he pulls me away from her with irresistible force.

I'm not saying that Tris' hatred isn't justified. I am not saying that Molly isn't a terrible person and didn't deserve something like this. But what I have just read in this novel is a female protagonist beating up another woman because of A MALE'S ACTIONS.

I'm serious. That is what just happened. There is literally no way to get around this, because that is what Roth wrote. And it is bullshit.

The next chapter begins with Tris telling us it's Visiting Day-- the day other faction's family members are allowed to come visit their sixteen-year-old children that have decided to leave them for some reason.

On my way out of the dormitory, Eric stops me.
"I may have underestimated you, Stiff," he says. "You did well yesterday."
I stare up at him. For the first time since I beat Molly, guilt pinches my gut.
If Eric thinks I did something right, I must have done it wrong.

Really? This is the first time you feel guilt? I...

I get to, for some reason, read a description of everybody's parents, which I didn't ask for and is totally unimportant, so forgive me for skipping over them.

Tris spots her mother and they hug each other and it's all lovely and sweet.

"Well, look at you," she says. "You've filled out."

Okay but at the beginning of the last chapter Tris said she'd slimmed down so... what.

Tris' father isn't visiting her, which isn't really a surprise since he seemed like that type of angry dad in all the intros we got of him.

"That's one of my instructors." I lean closer to her and say, "He's kind of intimidating."
"He's handsome," she says.
I find myself nodding without thinking.

Tris introduces her mother to Four, and it's actually laughably like when a teacher and a parent meet for the first time, right down to the reassurance from Four that her mother doesn't need to worry about Tris surviving the initiation.

Is he just reassuring her because she's my mother, or does he really believe that I am capable?

UGH. UGH! WHO CARES? DO YOU HAVE A NON-INSECURE BONE IN YOUR BODY? ARE ALL OF YOUR ACTIONS GOING TO COME AS A DIRECT RESULT OF PEOPLE AROUND YOU? ARE YOU A CHARACTER OR A SHELL, TRIS?

We move over to Will's family (he is a Candor transfer, remember) and his little sister gives us the only plot we've had thus far in this book:

"She's a council member's wife is what she is. She runs the 'volunteer agency' that supposedly helps the factionless. You think I don't know that you're just hoarding goods to distribute to your own faction while we don't get fresh food for a month, huh?"

Okay, so clearly there's some unrest between all of the factions. I mean, I'd heard about it previously in the novel, but the writing made it seem like it was strictly on a higher-up level.

Tris' mother removes them both from the situation and seems to navigate her way around the Dauntless compound with ease. Which allows the reader to put two and two together even though Tris can't seem to figure it out.

"Mom, how do you know where you're going?"

Tris... really....

Her mother warns her to not call too much attention to herself, which means I bet that she's gonna do something that calls attention to herself in the next few chapters. Her mother also apparently knows that she's a Divergent, and according to her mother, it's very common when children are raised in Abnegation. Which... sure... I guess...

"There's something I want you to do," she says. "I can't go visit your brother, but you can, when initiation is over. So, I want you to go find him and tell him to research the simulation serum. Okay? Can you do that for me?"

 Then Tris' mother leaves, and because she probably senses that her idiot daughter has not picked up all the heavy-handed hints she is laying down, she does this:

At the end of the hallway she turns and says, "Have a piece of cake for me, all right? The chocolate. It's delicious." She smiles a strange, twisted smile, and adds, "I love you, you know."
[ ... ]
I understand:
She has been to the compound before. She remembered this hallway. She knows about the initiation process.
My mother was Dauntless.

NO. SHIT. SHERLOCK.

Seriously, has there even been a protagonist as dumb as Tris? I'm serious, I'm calling her dumb, because she seems to be willfully ignoring everything unless someone points it out to her. I get that this could be a symptom of wanting to keep the reader in the dark, too, since it's first person (and this is why I don't write in first person), but there is a limit to how dumb you can make them seem.

Anyway, that's how the chapter ends, so let's all take a shot and try to forget how awful these last two chapters were.