Beatrice "Tris" Prior Quotes

Maybe my problem isn't that I can't go home. I will miss my mother and father and Caleb and evening firelight and the clack of my mother's knitting needles, but that is not the only reason for this hollow feeling in my stomach.

My problem might be that even if I did go home, I wouldn't belong there, among people who give without thinking and care without trying. (7.122-3)

See how family and "identity" overlap: Tris may miss her family, but she feels that she doesn't belong there. In other words, her identity doesn't match up with her family. But check out how vividly she describes the pleasures of her old home—"evening firelight," the sound of knitting needles. She may not belong in that family (she thinks), but she sure misses it.

I run my fingers through my hair and smooth it into a bun. I check my clothes—am I covered up? My pants are tight and my collarbone is showing. They won't approve.

Who cares if they approve? I set my jaw. This is my faction now. These are the clothes my faction wears. I stop just before the hallway ends.

Clusters of families stand on the Pit floor, most of them Dauntless families with Dauntless initiates. They still look strange to me—a mother with a pierced eyebrow, a father with a tattooed arm, an initiate with purple hair, a wholesome family unit. I spot Drew and Molly standing alone at one end of the room and suppress a smile. At least their families didn't come. (15.13-5)

Yes, Drew and Molly's families don't show up. In fact, we don't get to meet the families of lots of the jerks and villains in the book. It's a rare moment where she has something in common with them—absent families.

Scrubbing the floor when no one else wanted to was something that my mother would have done. If I can't be with her, the least I can do is act like her sometimes. (17.3)

After spending several chapters defying her family and their influence on her, here Tris is, after doing something her mother would do because it makes her feel better. This is after Edward was stabbed in the eye, so it makes sense that she would want to return to the non-stabby ways of her family.