Two years before Beatrice Prior made her choice, the sixteen-year-old son of Abnegation’s faction leader did the same. Tobias’s transfer to Dauntless is a chance to begin again. Here, he will not be called the name his parents gave him. Here, he will not let fear turn him into a cowering child.
Newly christened “Four,” he discovers during initiation that he will succeed in Dauntless. Initiation is only the beginning, though; Four must claim his place in the Dauntless hierarchy. His decisions will affect future initiates as well as uncover secrets that could threaten his own future—and the future of the entire faction system.
Two years later, Four is poised to take action, but the course is still unclear. The first new initiate who jumps into the net might change all that. With her, the way to righting their world might become clear. With her, it might become possible to be Tobias once again.
I love seeing similar events from different perspectives. For Divergent and Insurgent we got to see primarily from Tris's point of view; only in Allegiant did we get the chance to see even a glimpse of Tobias. These short stories do a great job of condensing some important milestones in Tobias's life. We got to see the scrawny boy before transferring to Dauntless, his journey through Dauntless and even the origins of his rivalry with Eric.
I will admit though, that Tris and Tobias have very similar stories as they go through Initation. Eric is essentially Tobias's "Peter", Amar is essentially his "Tobias." There were just a lot of parallels, and I'm not sure whether they were intentional or not.
One scene that was particularly striking was the jumper section of Initiation for both Tris and Tobias. When Tobias was an Initiate, he was the last jumper, which somewhat explains his respect and awe at Tris for being the first jumper. I honestly will say that I loved seeing these similarities and differences between Tris and Tobias.
I will admit though, I like Tris's voice a lot more than Tobias's. In terms of writing style, they are very similar, but Tris is more about the action, she doesn't seem to spend as much time as Tobias does thinking about everything, which is both good and bad. It felt like Tobias spent a whole lot of time just thinking about what the Erudite were doing and what Dauntless should be doing, and a whole lot less doing.
This may have been intentional but Tobias's takes on certain events seemed to go by much faster than Tris. For him, it seemed as though Initiation lasted a week or so, when in Divergent it lasted a couple months. This was probably done in order to keep the short stories short, but I still wish we had gotten a bit more detail on some events.
Did you guys read these short stories? Which one was your favorite? Let me know in the comments below! Mine was definitely the super short chapter at the very end that had events of him and Tris interacting.
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