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Part Two: The Girl Who Shatters the Shining Glass

Chapters 23–27 

Summary: Chapter 23, Day

Day wakes up in a cell. Commander Jameson comes in and begins taunting him. June follows, and Day realizes how different she looks now in a pristine military uniform. For a moment he is distracted by her beauty. June starts interrogating Day and beating him with the barrel of her gun, which Day notices is empty. When she rattles off a list of crimes he’s suspected of, he proudly admits to each of them, until the last one, the murder of Metias. Day suddenly realizes this is why June has been after him. He retorts that he didn’t kill her brother, but she is the reason his mother is dead. June whispers in his ear that she’s sorry and didn’t intend for his family to get hurt. 

June tells Day they know his name is Daniel Atlan Wing and he was supposed to have died in the labor camps. Day scoffs at June for naively believing that people work in the camps; the Republic kills them, he tells her. He asks about Tess, and June’s reply makes him realize June is trying to keep Tess a secret from the other military members. After June leaves, Day notices doctors carrying a body bag on a gurney marked with a red X like the one on his family’s door. He wonders why the government wants Eden and whether the plague is really an accident.

Summary: Chapter 24, June

The Republic throws a gala to celebrate Day’s capture and honor June. Thomas tries to get close to June, but she is repulsed by him. Later, Thomas informs June that the generals have taken a special interest in Eden. Elector Primo, the Republic’s dictator, introduces June to his son, Anden, a handsome twenty-year-old who plans to run for his father’s position. June blushes when Anden kisses her hand. When Thomas drops June off at home, he asks her if Day kissed her, and she admits he did. Thomas tries to kiss her himself, but she awkwardly pulls away. Unable to sleep, June decides to review Day’s case file. She notices something odd—Day’s Trial score is especially low. She hacks into the Trial database and is shocked to discover that Day’s test score is perfect, just like hers. 

Summary: Chapter 25, Day

Day is taken to a large public square the next morning for his sentencing. A huge crowd attends, and the JumboTrons show Day’s face splashed across the screens, one chunk of hair caked with red blood. Thomas announces Day’s arrest and capture. The crowd erupts in cheers, but some boo. Day’s sentencing is announced—public execution in four days. For a moment, Day catches June glancing at him with a look of sympathy in her eyes. Day is brought to Batalla Hall, where he is chained to a block of cement and left to roast in the sun until his execution. Commander Jameson leaves June in charge of guarding Day. Day lies in the sun, thinking about how he’ll rescue his brothers. He also recalls his Trial, how Chian drilled him with strange questions, and how ashamed he felt when John came to pick him up that day. He worries about Eden, who will face the Trial soon. 

Summary: Chapter 26, June

June brings Day’s rations of food and water. She tells him that John is in prison and that Eden is being seen by generals. She adds that she doesn’t know about Tess, which is the truth. June asks Day about the imperfection in his eye. He tells her that he was given the “imperfection” when he was taken to the labs for painful tests after his Trial exam. June realizes with horror that the military was testing Day’s superior DNA. She tells him that he got a perfect Trial score, contrary to what he was told. He confides in her his suspicions that the plague is purposely spread in the poor sectors. June, feeling sorry for Day, sends him to get his leg treated.

Summary: Chapter 27, Day

Day has a nightmare about Tess. He awakes in a hospital bed, confused. For a moment, he thinks he’s back in the labs where he was taken after his Trial. Commander Jameson comes in, angry that a group of protesters has formed outside the building. She sends Day to a cell. On the way there, Day spots television footage of the rioters outside. Some of them have painted red streaks in their hair to mimic Day’s hair on the day he was captured. Day is encouraged to see protesters supporting him but then realizes that they will likely be killed. 

Analysis: Chapters 23–27 

This section emphasizes the destructive nature of adhering too strongly either to pure logic or pure emotion. On the one hand, being logical and cool-headed allowed June to capture Day, a feat no one has been able to accomplish before her. However, it has also led her astray from the truth that she’s been manipulated by Commander Jameson and Thomas. Because she can’t find a reason why they would betray her, she assumes they’re being honest with her. She believes in the Republic, and the order of the military, so when Commander Jameson and Thomas bring her in to investigate her brother’s body, she never suspects they were the ones who had him killed. In Day’s case, though he usually acts with forethought, the threat to his family makes him act impulsively. If he had thought it through, he might have chosen to run, knowing he was outnumbered. Now, due to his actions, Day’s mother is dead and the rest of his family is captured.  

This conflict of logic versus emotion leads to real breakthroughs for the characters as they struggle to resolve it. As Part Two opens, June is put in charge of questioning Day. Logic tells her that he’s a bad person and a killer, but she’s been plagued with doubts ever since she met him. Day took care of her when he found her on the streets, and she is aware of the fact that he has a track record of never killing his hostages or victims. Furthermore, she starts feeling an emotional attraction toward him, and sympathy under his care. Fighting off these emotional misgivings and doubts, June rattles off accusations to Day. Day, on his part, holds his head high, proud of the crimes she lists off. He’s not ashamed of his past, and even has an emotional attachment—pride—to his work. When June lists off Metias’s murder, however, Day has a moment of realization. He suddenly realizes this is why June has been after him—to avenge her brother’s murder. Day is now in a similar position to June—logically he knows she is his enemy, but emotionally, he feels different. He now understands the complexity of her situation and her motivations for going after him. These two characters, in trying to balance their logic and emotion, find they can’t achieve balance, and need to get to the bottom of who each other are to resolve it. 

The theme of logic versus emotion is continued to be explored in these chapters in how each character perceives the Republic itself. Day sees the reality of the Republic because he’s suffered emotionally from their torture. In contrast, June does not see the Republic as wrong because her logic gets in the way. June may be extremely intelligent and logical but she is easily fooled by Commander Jameson and Thomas, who deceive her into finding and following Day when in fact they are her brother’s killers. Because of June’s privileged background, she has never had to question authority. Day is right when he calls June naive for not realizing that kids are not sent to labor camps but rather killed in death camps once they fail the Trial. She never questions anything the Republic has told her until the people around her show how brutal the Republic is to her face. It’s only when her heart tells her that something’s amiss with the people in the Republic’s military—such as Thomas, when he carries out orders to kill blindly like a robot right in front of her—that she begins to question the Republic and investigate.

Day’s proud admission to the crimes he has committed brings up the interesting issue of disobedience to authority. Readers might ask themselves, “When is breaking the law justified? Is it acceptable to disobey authority when that authority itself breaks what might be considered moral law?” Day has always been careful not to hurt anyone, a fact that makes June wonder how he could have murdered her brother. By making Day a protagonist of the story, the author is suggesting that fighting against the evil Republic justifies illegal actions. 

Because the novel is told from both Day’s and June’s perspectives, however, the author suggests that both their perspectives, abilities, and ways of achieving their goals are valid and that both must be integrated to get a clear vision of the Republic and the people who inhabit it. Day may be right that the Republic is evil, suppressing the poor in slums, using its people as experimental lab rats, and even systematically murdering them. However, there are also good people in the government, like June, who simply haven’t had the experience to open their eyes and minds. Likewise, the slums might be full of basically good people just trying desperately to survive, but it was also home to Thomas, who turns out to be a slavish, cold-blooded killer incapable of sympathy or compassion. Lu suggests that both Day’s healthy distrust of authority and June’s precision and superior education will be necessary to create a worthy opponent of the state.

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