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Chapter 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Divergent, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Identity, Choice, and Divergence
Strength, Selfishness, and Selflessness
Competition, Groups, and Rivalries
Fear, Bravery, and Maturity
Women and Sexuality
Summary
Analysis
Tris has a dream in which she sees Natalie. Suddenly, Christina wakes her up and rushes her to the chasm. The Dauntless have just discovered a body at the bottom of the water, and they’re pulling it up with rope right now. Tris realizes that the body they’re recovering is Al’s: he’s thrown himself to his death. Christina and Tris weep for Al’s death. Tris then begins to laugh hysterically, trying unsuccessfully to stop herself.
Although Al tried to hurt her—and even kill her—Tris feels guilty about pushing Al away from her, rather than forgiving him. Al’s death reminds Tris of the limits of Dauntless culture: by pitting the recruits against one another, Eric has created an atmosphere of pain and shame, where recruits sabotage each other instead of providing useful support.
Themes
There’s a funeral for Al. There, everyone except Tris drinks a lot. Tris runs into Tori, and together they join up with Tris’s friends. Tris sees Molly, who teases her about Andrew, her father. Tris wants to fight Molly, but Will breaks up the fight right away.
Tris still can’t entirely control her feelings about her family: whenever someone else criticizes her father and mother, Tris tries to fight them.
Themes
The funeral begins, with Eric presiding. Eric explains that Al’s suicide was an act of bravery, for which he should be celebrated by his peers. After Eric’s eulogy, Tris tells Four that Eric’s speech was absurd: it encourages Dauntless recruits to sacrifice their lives instead of preserving them. Four tells Tris to calm herself. He reminds her that he nicked her ear with a knife: he did so, he explains, to remind Tris that she needed to be courageous in order to protect others.
Eric’s presence at Al’s funeral sends a dark message: it reminds us that Eric’s ethos of competition and cruelty has indirectly led to Al’s death. By encouraging Al and his peers to vie for a high position in the rankings, he drove Al to hyper-competitiveness and self-hatred. Four, by contrast, uses pain for a good purpose: to force his recruits to be strong and self-motivated.
Themes
Tris confesses to Four that she feels guilty about Al’s death. If she’d forgiven Al, she wonders, he might have chosen not to kill himself. Tris realizes that she’s not as purely Dauntless as she thought: she still feels an instinct to forgive and accept, the product of her Abnegation upbringing. Four, recognizing that Tris is getting emotional, kisses Tris’s forehead, and Tris touches Four’s waist with her hands.
In this important scene, Tris shows some physical affection for Four, and vice versa. Tris isn’t sure what she wants: if she wants to remain in Dauntless or leave altogether. Her attraction to Four is partly because she senses that he too feels like an outsider among the Dauntless.
Themes
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