White Mts. 4

"The bitter thing was all the spirit, all the gallantry, was wasted. For even more than inferiors, they accepted and looked forward to being Capped. It was a part of becoming a knight, or of turning from a girl to l"The bitter thing was all the spirit, all the gallantry, was wasted. For even more than inferiors, they accepted and looked forward to being Capped. It was a part of becoming a knight, or of turning from a girl to lady. Thinking of this, I saw how good things could be meaningless in isolation. What value did courage have, without a free and challenging mind to direct it?" (p. 111)
In France when people are capped everyone accepts it as a natural part of life and you have to do it (not only in France). In France it is considered this to be a process of a girl turning in to a lady and a boy to a knight. So this is sort of like a graduation ceremony in our world. All these things the people are thinking are not true- this is not a natural part of growing up, this is not a process of young children becoming adults. In our world adults are free people who can do anything they want- marry, get a job they can literally do anything they want. Though in the book you can not define capped people as free. This ceremony is the process of a human serving the tripods. A human's knowledge, mind, opinions are not theirs anymore once they are capped. So if they are not free then how can they have courage to do anything? How can they make their decisions? How can they live their life? This is what I think the passage is talking about.