Insurgent Guilt

This book opens with Tris sticking her key in the ignition to begin a hundred-page-long guilt trip. Not that we blame her. Shooting a friend, even when you feel you're forced to do it, isn't an easy thing to overcome. Not that we're speaking from experience.

Tris is going with the out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach to assuaging her guilt. We're not sure if this is going to work, or if that smoking gun is going to turn into a something like the telltale heart, a ticking time bomb reminding her of what she's done.

Telling your boyfriend that you're dreaming of another man is hard. Telling him that you're dreaming of another man you killed one time is even harder. However, by keeping it from Tobias, Tris is just layering guilt on top of guilt here. It's a seven-layer dip of guilt, without the guacamole.

Guilt weighs Tris down. Maybe that's why every one of her moves takes so much effort: all that guilt makes her weigh twenty more pounds.

Plotwise, this is a nice way for Tris to absolve her guilt. She overcomes the truth serum, but she still confesses the truth. That makes her, like, extra not guilty now, right?

For someone who is guilty about pretty much everything, telling the truth can feel like going to the gym after years of inactivity. It can feel good and be kind of addicting to actually be honest for once. It's healthy.

Ah, here we see an even deeper reason for Tris's guilt. She feels guilty that she didn't love Will enough to save him. She feels guilty that she only saves boys she's romantically attracted to. Yeah, well, maybe that is something to feel kind of guilty about. Unless you're her boyfriend, you do not want your life to be in this girl's hands.

When Tris is unable to focus on anything other than her extreme guilt, she becomes suicidal. This even happens after she confesses the truth to everyone. Is there anything she can do to overcome these terrible feelings?

Tris cannot pick up a gun without feeling guilty for shooting Will. She definitely realizes that guns don't kill people… she kills people. Trying to rationalize to herself that it was something she had to do is really difficult.

Tris feels guilty about lying to Tobias for basically the same reason she feels guilty for shooting Will: she doesn't feel that she has any other choice. Do you think that if she just owned up and took responsibility for her own actions, she might feel better about them?