How It All Goes Down
- Dauntless headquarters is underground, and the nine new transfers get to sleep in one room with bunk beds. Just like sleepaway camp, except with guns.
- (To keep you up to date, of the nine transfers to Dauntless, there are five Candor transfers, three Erudite transfers, and one Abnegation transfer—Tris. We feel bad for Amity, who have no transfers.)
- Four will be their instructor for a while, but first guides them through their new home, called the Pit.
- It's a big, well, pit. It's underground, and at the bottom, there's a chasm and some rushing water—a good reminder that it's easy to die if you're too brave.
- And there's living space all along the walls of the Pit. Pretty much everyone dresses in black, which is perfect underground wear.
- Tris thinks it's a big mess but kind of exciting. We think it sounds like Batman's prison, but to each his own.
- They go to the cafeteria and Tris has her first hamburger.
- We also meet another young leader of the Dauntless, a scary dude named Eric. As Tris notes, "His knuckles are scabbed over, right where they would split if he punched something too hard" (55). Sounds like a fun guy, right?
- Eric is more important than Four, but they also seem to be rivals in some way that Tris doesn't understand. Maybe it's because the big leader of Dauntless (Max) wants to give Four a job promotion but Four doesn't want it.
- At the bunkroom, Eric explains how Dauntless initiation works (or doesn't): it's a big competition and only the top-ranked people get in. Yay? No, wait, what's the opposite of yay?
- The first night, all the new transfers to Dauntless are a little homesick.
- A big guy named Al actually breaks into tears, which really convinces Tris not to cry. (Al is a transfer from Candor, so maybe crying out loud is what he's used to, since Candor is all about telling the truth.)
- It also convinces her that she's in the right place since a good Abnegation girl would want to comfort this crying guy. And she just wants him to be stronger and not bother her.