Beatrice "Tris" Prior Quotes

As Tris (and Four) make clear, Tris's fear landscape has a lot of powerlessness in various forms (birds, drowning, ocean waves, etc.), because Tris's big fear is losing control. But since people can control their fear landscapes, Tris can summon a symbol of power to combat the symbol of powerlessness: gun vs. birds. Although if she can control the fear landscape, why not get lots of guns, Matrix-style?

Look at that interjection, that tiny little reminder that her dad is dead. (As if we'd forget.) Because her dad has—excuse us, had—a theory of power, and because he put that theory into practice, he's dead now. So was his self-sacrifice a form of power or powerlessness?

Much like in our world, one of the main sources of guilt for Tris is her family: they seem like such perfect Abnegation folk, and it's beautiful to watch them (see "Family"), but Tris still doesn't feel like she belongs (see "Identity"). That's pretty much the perfect formula for guilt, when your family and your identity don't mesh.

Tris's feelings of guilt might be punishment enough. Here she is, feeling all kinds of bad about abandoning her parents, to the point that she feels like she's being set on fire. The way it's phrased we know she's not: "At first[…] I think" are indicators that her first thoughts were incorrect. But still, her feeling of guilt does seem like its own punishment here.

Tris wants us to think that she doesn't care what her parents would think. But there's a big difference between kicking someone and thinking "I wonder what's for lunch today"—which shows you really don't care—and kicking someone and thinking "mom and dad wouldn't be thrilled with this." She may say she doesn't care, but the fact that she's still thinking about her parents shows that she kind of maybe sort of does.

Here's one way Tris finds to deal with past guilt. Yes, she abandoned her family, but she can still put into practice some of their lessons, like helping other people, or scrubbing the floor like her mom would (17.3). Does this make up for her past guilt, though? Or does she still feel guilty?

Here's a guilt and blame twofer: (1) how much does Tris blame Al for joining with Peter and attacking her?; and (2) how guilty does Tris feel for not forgiving Al? It's curious that this issue of guilt and blame is phrased in the same way that Tris talks about her identity—it's about being able to recognize a part of herself. If only she'd had mirrors growing up.

Oh, girlfriend, we've all been there. Aggravatingly (and relatably), her first response to Four ignoring her is to blame herself for getting her hopes up and misreading the situation. Even in the dystopian future, there's going to your room to feel bad about yourself when relationships seem to be going wrong. Some things never change.

After shooting her mind-controlled friend Will, Tris feels so guilty that her sentences start breaking down. A similar thing happens to her with Al commits suicide (24.9-16). Notice also the pretty severe effect of this guilt: screaming, crying, and feeling dead. Guilt is (obviously) no laughing matter.

We only get to hear a little bit about how other factions handle initiation. (In Candor, they have a truth-off, but in Amity do they have a friendly-off?) In Dauntless, it's all competition all the time. And it's not just about initiation. It also influences what kind of life these Dauntless will have, since the winners get to pick their jobs first.

Tris is thinking something that we would like to write a paper on: Does competition reveal identity? Faced with competition for the first time (unless she used to play dodgeball in school, which we doubt), Tris has a question about how she will do and what that will reveal about her. Is she brave or selfish—or not selfish enough?

Competition calls up all sorts of feelings for Tris, and even leads her to question her friendships. Seriously, what are friends for if now to give you a whole bunch of false hope?

As Tris notes, the Dauntless are very interested in pride (13.9). So they don't reward winning a competition with a stuffed animal or kewpie doll. The real prize of competition is bragging rights and proving that you're better than other people. That sure sounds like a nice community to live in said no one ever.

While the initiates have their competition, the older Dauntless have theirs. Eric and Four were in the same initiate group, so they've probably been competing non-stop for two years. Because once you're in Dauntless, you're constantly judging yourself against others. Who is more ruthless? Who is smarter? Who's got better tattoos?

Ever notice how Tris has this habit of saying one thing and then saying kind of the opposite thing? Like here, she starts off saying "it is easy to forget" that we're competing; but in the very next sentence she notes that she's going to have to beat her friends. This is a pretty clear example of how friendship and competition are constantly tugging in her different directions (and getting her to say opposite things).

All the competition with friends is complex and troubling. So it's almost a relief to get down to some competition with enemies. Here Tris is in a meeting with Jeanine Matthews, and by "in a meeting," we mean something like this. But even while Tris knows that Jeanine is "an attack dog," she doesn't understand why they are fighting. Which points to a larger theme of the book—are these factions and this system of government really worth all the hullabaloo?

This is the big choice that Tris faces; and luckily for her, she has some help in making that choice. Before she decides, she gets to go through the Sorting Hat—er, we mean the aptitude test. But even with that aptitude test, notice how big this choice is: it gets three repetitions of the phrase "I will decide." That's how we know it's important.

Everyone in a faction does the same things because they're in that faction. And yet Tris recognizes the possible separation between the "individual preference" and "Faction customs." Is Tris the only one who feels like making a non-faction choice? (Probably not, but it can feel like that sometimes.)

Tris isn't the only one who wants to express her individual choices against the faction norms (see above). Even Caleb, the perfect Abnegation, does something very non-Abnegation here. And we know this is a big issue because Tris keeps breaking in to tell us it's a big issue: Caleb's eyes are stern, his voice has an edge. If this were just a boring line of dialogue, Tris probably wouldn't be noticing all these little physical clues.

Even after the big decision about what faction to be in, Tris is left with dozens of other choices about how she wants to act. Here's one of the most striking choices. And what's striking about it is that Tris doesn't choose the action-hero "do the right thing no matter the cost" choice. Instead, she chooses to let her friend dangle for a while. Yikes.