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Pierce BrownA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
A Pink named Matteo grooms Darrow’s new body and insists that he learn Gold manners and speech patterns. Matteo threatens Darrow with a razor, telling him the Golds are quick to wage violence when provoked. Dancer tells Darrow his new Gold name, but Darrow refuses to accept a first name other than Darrow.
Matteo conducts a lesson in culinary customs with Darrow. Golds do not leave a dining table to use the restroom, use a variety of cutlery, and do not eat to excess to demonstrate self-control in front of peers.
Dancer instructs Darrow in his Gold accent. He tells Darrow this Gold identity is a cover for his true mission. Dancer describes the customs he enjoyed as a young man in the mines, which resemble those that Darrow once knew. He charges Darrow to remember Eo’s dream as he becomes a person he hates. Dancer warns that Darrow will have to compromise his morals to succeed as a Gold.
Matteo teaches Darrow five Gold dances. Darrow dances the fifth, the Polemides, with particular skill. Matteo is shocked and suspicious upon seeing this dance and asks Darrow if he is actually a lowRed as he claims. Darrow looks up the Polemides and witnesses footage of Gold fighting technique.
The following morning, Dancer tells Darrow his new name: Darrow au Andromedus. Matteo takes Darrow to learn horse riding. Darrow has difficulty riding a pony. A beautiful Gold woman mocks him as she passes by on a stallion.
Darrow takes his test to gain admission to the Institute. The test is based on logic problems that require extrapolative thinking. During the test Darrow steals his neighbor’s stylus without her knowledge. The test proctor sees footage of this and smiles approvingly at Darrow.
Afterward, a girl named Antonia calls Darrow “Cutter” (108). A handsome young man named Cassius au Bellona approaches Darrow and acknowledges his inferior birth (to a fake family of Dancer’s design). Cassius invites Darrow to join him at a few clubs after their physical tests.
Darrow undergoes intense physical tests such as sitting in a freezing room and holding his breath for ten minutes. Darrow’s Helldiver training makes his hands agile when balls fly at him. Darrow changes in the locker rooms and hears the Reds’ forbidden song. The girl who mocked him while riding is singing it, and Darrow flees in fear once he catches her eye.
Darrow studies Mars’s terraformed surface as he rides home with Matteo. He asks Matteo about Institute life, and Matteo knows little. He warns that Darrow will likely have to show aggression if he wants to graduate as a Peerless Scarred and earn a prestigious apprenticeship thereafter.
The Board of Quality Control visits Darrow’s new luxury apartment. They subject him to a lie detector test and ask him if he cheated during his test for the Institute. Darrow acts offended at the questions. A month later, he learns that he passed, getting only one question wrong.
Before leaving for the Institute, Darrow says goodbye to Dancer, who gives him a knifeRing. Harmony says goodbye and that Evey will live with her and Dancer. Matteo gives Darrow a Pegasus pendant that holds one petal of Eo’s haemanthus flower.
Darrow sits nervously in the shuttle before another young man, Julian, extends his hand. Darrow exchanges small talk with him. A Bronze nearby named Sevro insults Julian and Darrow for their congenial talk. Sevro and Julian trade insults. Both mention their scores, which fall far below Darrow’s.
The shuttle reaches the Valles Marineris and the city of Agea. At the gates of the Institute, the students hear a speech from ArchGovernor Nero au Augustus. Augustus describes the various kinds of decadence that ruin empires. He criticizes the democratic ideal of equality. Augustus chastises the students for succumbing to pleasure-seeking rather than maintaining the dominance of their race through pain and suffering. He references Eo, or Persephone, who suffered death and became powerful as a result.
A Gold from the Institute asks Darrow which House he would prefer. Darrow must pass a test, snatching a goblet from a hill after defeating various obstacles. Various Peerless Scarred Proctors interview Darrow and assess him for entrance into their Houses. Proctors from Jupiter and Apollo test Darrow, followed by Fitchner from House Mars. He punches Darrow, who kicks him in retaliation.
Along with 99 other students, Darrow prepares for the Draft as representatives of the Houses assemble before them. House Mercury Drafters ask about Darrow’s family and do not select him. A powerful Gold named Lorn au Arcos selects Darrow for House Mars. Darrow remarks, “I am chosen tenth. Tenth out of one thousand” (128).
Darrow enters the Institute’s opulent dining hall. Since he was a firstDraft selection, he sits next to the head of the table. Antonia, whom Darrow recognizes from the test, sits nearby. Cassius joins them and bickers with Antonia. Cassius jeers at the lesser members of the table, but a Premier named Priam sticks up for them.
Cassius asks Darrow if he cheated on his test. Darrow replies that he neither cheated nor studied, then realizes he has breached the good manners Matteo taught him. Darrow claims he was joking and that he studied hard. Darrow hobnobs with other Golds in the hall.
Darrow sees Julian again and realizes he and Cassius are twin brothers. Julian says that Darrow supports Yorkton in sports.
Darrow reaches a well-appointed bedroom. He receives a massage, takes a shower, and goes to sleep thinking of his wife.
Darrow wakes to men beating him. They drag him into the hall, and Darrow realizes this is an Institute test. The men continue beating Darrow and place a bag on his head. He is lifted into the air and can’t see anything. Darrow is left naked in a room with Julian, who has also been beaten. Fitchner enters, throws a golden ring between the young men, and tells them, “Only one comes out alive” (136).
Darrow anticipates a fight and assesses Julian’s weaker frame. Julian argues that he must win the ring for the sake of the Bellona family, among Mars’s most important dynasties. Darrow considers how he must compromise his values for the sake of his people. He beats Julian and feels uncertain. Darrow breaks Julian’s nose and headbutts him repeatedly. He punches Julian in the chest and kills him.
This section begins with Dancer’s dark prediction: “Look into yourself, Darrow, and you’ll realize that you are a good man who will have to do bad things” (102). This statement foreshadows the event that ends Part 2: Darrow murdering Julian during the Passage.
In the months since Darrow’s resurrection from the dead, he has transformed into a new man. He now looks the part of an elite Gold: mighty, beautiful, and unscarred. He has mastered their way of thinking, their speaking, their history, and their culture. All the while, he thinks about who he truly is and despises how this race has enslaved his own. He is able to maintain a stronger sense of self around the Sons of Ares like Dancer, Harmony, and Matteo. These allies take pains to train him for the sake of the resistance, but it is Darrow who must masquerade as a Gold, risking torture and the brutal murder of his family if he is discovered.
The Sons of Ares also remind Darrow that Golds will do almost anything to maintain their power. As Darrow himself witnesses, they execute cruelty and competition with cunning elegance. From the moment he steps onto the shuttle to the Institute, he witnesses fighting within the Golds as new students try to prove their mettle against one another. They are born to compete. As the testing, the Draft, and the Passage reveal, the Golds assess and sort others based on intelligence, strength, beauty, and aggression. Worth is not assumed but earned.
Nero au Augustus elaborates on this philosophy as he speaks at the gates of the Institute. He decries human equality and democracy as challenges to absolute power:
Our Savagery began when our capital, Luna, rebelled against the tyranny of Earth and freed herself from the shackles of Demokracy, from the Noble Lie—the idea that men are brothers and are created equal (121-22).
He speaks of nations like Rome, China, and the United States—all ancient civilizations now—that lost their power. Only through pain and sacrifice, Augustus says, can the students become Golds who maintain a firm grasp of the solar system.
Darrow, then, has an advantage over his peers at the Institute. As he surveys them at the test, he remarks: “For all their physical stature, they are children with exaggerated senses of self-worth; they don’t know hardship” (109). Darrow has endured lifelong suffering in the mines with inadequate nutrition and meager resources. Although he hates ArchGovernor Augustus for killing Eo, Darrow does agree with his assessment of the pampered youth that surround him.
Darrow’s natural abilities, harrowing experiences as a Helldiver, and new Gold capabilities render him nearly superhuman. The Golds treat him as an oddity, but they cannot hide their admiration for him. Julian, clearly impressed with Darrow, later meets a bloody end at his hand. Darrow has convinced himself that he can fool others without losing his true identity, but this moment makes him realize that he will “sacrifice my soul” (137) to free his people. The transformation has infiltrated his new body and will exact more from his soul as his mission continues.
By Pierce Brown