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Ally CondieA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Cassia is in the middle of class when she receives a message through the classroom’s main port telling her she’s committed an Infraction and an Officer will arrive soon. Everyone looks at her as such incidents are unusual. However, Cassia isn’t surprised. She’s been breaking many rules lately and feels it was only a matter of time before she got caught. Cassia leaves the classroom, knowing she will find the same Official who told her that they were investigating Ky’s face on her microcard.
The familiar Official is seated outside and gestures for Cassia to sit, telling her that she earned the year’s top score on her sorting test. She smiles to reassure Cassia, but the latter only feels hatred. The Official explains that despite her score, Cassia will be deemed unfit for work unless she suppresses her feelings for Ky. She adds that while such flings are normal within a year of being Matched, Cassia’s situation is different because Ky is an Aberration. Cassia angrily responds that people should be able to choose their Match. She then asks about her Infraction, which the Official dismisses as a mistake. The Official jokes that mistakes seem to keep happening to Cassia.
When Cassia returns home, Bram tells her she has a package—the framed scrap of her Match Banquet dress. When Bram expresses disappointment, Cassia asks him what he was expecting, angrily adding that they’re never getting their artifacts back. Bram quietly leaves the room. Cassia wants to tell the Officials that she’s tired of getting “samples and scraps,” now understanding that they give the populace “just enough freedom” to keep them from going insane (249). She takes out Ky’s newest napkin, promising herself it’ll be the last one. It contains another poem as well as a colored painting of a younger Ky reaching for the older one. Two Officials flank the older Ky, and Cassia recognizes one of them as the Official who spoke to her.
Cassia wakes to screaming. She gets out of bed and finds her mother, who tells her that the screaming is the sound of saws cutting down all the maple trees. Cassia’s family and several others go outside to watch. Cassia asks her father why this is happening, and he explains that the trees are too messy and aren’t uniform. She notes this isn’t so bad for Em, whose tree was small compared to theirs, but her mother proclaims that it’s sad for everyone. Her mother adds that this is a warning meant specifically for her, but Cassia doesn’t think so.
Cassia dreams of Ky holding his ground while being surrounded by Officials, despite his fear. At hiking, she tries to act composed, but once they’re alone, she tells Ky about the Official. He tells her that they talked to him too. He doesn’t seem concerned and hands Cassia a white folded paper with a poem on it, explaining it’s her late birthday gift. It’s a stanza from another poem by Dylan Thomas—which he says is all he could afford. Ky adds that it reminds him of the first time they met at the pool. Cassia tears up and asks him to read it to her. When Ky’s finished, they stand close to each other and he kisses her on the cheek—“Soft, light, full of promise” (258).
The kiss feels like a new beginning, and Cassia carries it with her through the rest of the day. She fantasizes about her and Ky together and dreams of him that night. The next day at hiking, she asks Ky how they can possibly make things work between them. He explains the “prisoner’s dilemma”—which Cassia recognizes as a card game that he played with Xander. Conceptually, it’s the dilemma that two people face when they get caught committing a crime together. While both prisoners should remain silent to stay safe, one will almost always betray the other. Ky clarifies, however, that he trusts Cassia, and knows they will both try to protect each other for as long as possible; he believes they can both remain silent. Cassia can see he wants to kiss her on the lips, but he refrains. Should it happen, they will have betrayed the Society, as well as Xander.
On their hikes, Ky asks Cassia about her memories—like that of Bram’s first day of school. Bram hadn’t wanted to go and started crying. Cassia told him he’d never learn to read or write, and that she knew games to play on the scribe (an electronic tablet). Since there weren’t actually games on the scribe, Cassia made up sorting games for them to play. Ky notes that this day was when he learned how caring she was. He questions their reconnection (as they were never particularly close) and she lies, telling him that them being first on the smaller hill sparked her interest. Cassia doesn’t want him to know that her curiosity was sparked by the mistake on her first microcard of Xander. She later realizes that Ky didn’t give her a napkin this time, as they are now part of each other’s story.
Cassia’s relationship with Ky is “like a storm” that makes her feel “alive, alive, alive” (267). They talk and touch hands as they walk up the Hill, and it never seems like they have enough time. Ky tells Cassia about the “Archivists,” people who saved some of the works rejected by the Hundred Committee in order to distribute them through illegal ports. However, the Archivists demand high prices for their goods. Ky tells Cassia that if she ever needs to trade anything, she can use the Dylan Thomas poem because they don’t have it. She would have to go to a certain exhibit in the Museum and wait. Someone will come and ask if she wants to know more history, an affirmative response meaning she wants to reach an Archivist. Ky warns Cassia to be careful, just as she is with the Officials and everyone else in the Society.
Ky starts singing one of the Hundred Songs. When Cassia tells him that she loves the song, he explains that all the voices of the Hundred Songs are artificially created to sound as authentic as possible. He takes out her birthday poem and suggests they bury it together, now that she knows it by heart. Instead, Cassia tears it up into small pieces and throws them into the air, letting the breeze catch them. She vows to one day “share the poems” (272) and explain her revelations to Xander.
On a different day, Ky asks Cassia to tell him what she was thinking before her Match Banquet. She responds that she was thinking about angels flying to heaven. Ky wonders if anyone still believes in angels. When Cassia asks if he does, he says he believes in her. The next day, she asks Ky why he cried during the showing (Chapter 8). He tells her that the footage of people running and dying is real and occurs regularly in the Outer Provinces. Cassia tells him to close his eyes, and she writes “I love you” (275) in the earth. When Ky sees the message, he tells her that he loves her too. They lean in to kiss when a whistle blows to signal hiking is over.
At the bottom of the Hill, Cassia and Ky find several Officials. Cassia recognizes them from her sorting test. They ask her to come with them for the “on-site portion of the sorting test” (277). They ride the air train, surrounded by workers dressed in blue—including Ky. As the Officials stand up to exit the train in the Industrial District, Cassia realizes that her sorting test might involve Ky. She watches Ky get off the train in front of her and enter the workers’ side entrance, while they enter the same building through the front. One of the Officials places datatags on Cassia and explains that they want to use a real-life situation to see if she can help “improve function and efficiency” (280).
Cassia stands in a huge room with metal floors and concrete walls. A whistle blows and new shift workers arrive, replacing the workers already on the floor. The Officials take Cassia up to the top of a metal tower to sort the workers, watching as they spray an endless line of foilware coming from houses and meal halls. The room is hot, and Cassia is sticky with sweat. When an Official asks Cassia what she thinks, she responds that machines would do the job better. The Official says they’ve already come up with a solution—to extend hours and cut leisure time. The Officials want Cassia to rank the workers by their efficiency, which makes her uneasy. Those that don’t make the cut will be relocated to another project. Cassia asks what this means, but the Official dismisses the information as irrelevant. She takes deep breaths, thinking what Ky would do in this situation, and starts sorting.
Cassia watches the workers and ranks them using their assigned numbers. She checks the number of the middle worker and recognizes it as Ky’s. She marvels at his ability to remain “exactly average” (285). Although Cassia wants to sort Ky into the higher group so he can get a better job, she also selfishly wants him to stay. However, when the Official tells Cassia that most menial workers are Aberrations and don’t live to 80, she realizes that the Society privileges the strong. She ultimately decides to sort Ky into the higher group.
Cassia opens a port message from the sorting Official, who congratulates her on her sort and tells her to stay tuned for her work position. Back in her room, Cassia searches for her microcard but can’t find it. Her mother comes in and asks what she’s looking for. Cassia claims she was looking for her framed dress fabric and already found it. Cassia’s mother asks if she’s been upset because of her Match. Cassia confirms this, but refrains from revealing that she’s in love with someone else and resents the Society. She asks her mother why her latest report was so important. She explains that undocumented crops were growing in two different locations. The Society wanted to know if they were edible—and if they were being planted as part of a rebellion. Cassia’s mother determined that both were likely, feeling she had no choice but to be honest in order to keep her family safe.
Cassia finds her microcard in her closet. She decides to tell Xander the truth about her desire for independence and love for Ky. At hiking, Cassia and Ky know their time together is running out. Not only are summer activities coming to an end, but Ky thinks the Society’s border wars are faltering. He recounts the day that Officials told him he’d been mistakenly entered in the Matching pool, and that Cassia would have been his Match. Cassia is devastated by their relationship possibly being artificially created by the Society. Later, Cassia eats with Xander, noting that her meal portions are getting even smaller. She takes him to the botany pond and admits she’s in love with someone else. Xander won’t look at her but doesn’t seem surprised. When Cassia tells Xander that Ky’s face also appeared on the microcard, he points out that she only chose to see Ky over him. He leaves her crying by the pond.
Later that night, Cassia quietly destroys the frame containing the piece of her Match Banquet dress. She pulls out the fabric and puts it in the pocket of her clothes for the next day. At hiking, a junior Official fills in for the day. He informs the group that they’ve decided to shorten summer activities and this outing will be their last. As Cassia and Ky ascend the Hill, he tells her that they should climb to the top. Cassia detects “a challenge in his voice” (311). She insists she wants to, and they hold hands, both feeling “the same urgency” (312) as they climb.
Before they reach the top, Cassia stops and tells Ky that she fears the Society’s control over her life—especially the orchestration of their Match. Ky pleads with her not to give up on their relationship. She wishes to confess something else, but he already knows about his new work position. Ky assumes the Officials told Cassia about menial workers’ shorter life expectancy to encourage her to place him in the higher group (despite his middling status).
At the top of the Hill, Ky gives Cassia his compass, assuring her that Xander can teach her how to use it. She wonders if he’s giving up on them in pushing her towards Xander. Ky whispers that the compass will help Cassia find him should he leave. He also hands her the final part of his story, telling her to look at it later and not destroy it. In return, she gives him her dress fabric. Ky pulls Cassia close and kisses her on the lips.
In these chapters, Cassia’s disenchantment with the Society solidifies, as does her love for Ky. When Cassia is warned by an Official to suppress her feelings for Ky, she boldly responds that “people should be able to choose who they Match with” (246). Her desire for free will, for wants over needs, is now undeniable. She wants the freedom to decide her romantic partner, diet, exercise routine, job, and what she reads and writes. Cassia has become, in her mind, “a river of want” (300). In the process, she loses her faith in the Society as the ultimate source of authority—as she recognizes its tailored comforts for the distractions they are.
The Society also loses credibility the more Cassia experiences poetry. While her passion for written verse started with the Dylan Thomas poem, it intensifies as she reads Ky’s original poetry. Ky also gifts her a verse of another Thomas poem that he purchased on the black market. When Cassia receives it, she is “blinded […] by the beauty of his surprise and so overwhelmed by possibility and impossibility” (257). She is now aware of her own oppression—and how much might be possible if it were overcome. She ultimately believes in The Revolutionary Power of Art and Poetry in inspiring original thought and powerful emotions. Cassia knows the arts are crucial to her liberation, and her goal is to one day share them with others—so that they might be liberated too.
At the conclusion of Chapter 28, Cassia and Ky seal their young love with a long-awaited kiss. Cassia has yearned for this moment but was hesitant to act on her feelings because it would mean betraying Xander. Although she feared hurting Xander and sometimes missed “the way things used to be” (262) with him, she clarifies her love for Ky in Chapter 27. This confession cements her choice to be with Ky, whom she has come to trust completely. He makes her feel “alive, alive, alive” (267)—which somewhat speaks to what Ky represents more so than who he is. Regardless, Cassia desires Ky more than Xander and acts on this. Although she is momentarily upset by the possibility that the Officials orchestrated their Match, Ky reminds her that she shouldn’t let herself be “defined by their choices” (313). Through Ky’s perspective, she has begun to dream of more for herself. He has given Cassia “the hopeless, beautiful belief that things might work” (259) despite the difficulty of straying from the Society’s easier, more comfortable path.
By Ally Condie