Chapters 3 & 4

Summary: Chapter 3: Finch: Day 6 (still) of being awake

As Finch walks to U.S. Geography, he overhears people talking. Violet Markey saved Theodore Finch from jumping off the bell tower. Apparently, the news has swept through the school.

Violet, late for class, fumbles and drops her arm full of books. Finch, to draw attention away from her, knocks one of his own books on the floor, then topples his chair over. As he rights himself, he smiles at Violet. She smiles back. 

After Mr. Black explains the “Wander Indiana” project, Finch announces that he chooses Violet for his partner. When Violet uses her three magic words to try to get out of the project, Mr. Black tells her “it’s time to get back on the camel.” It is then that Finch remembers the accident.

After class, Gabe Romero, or Roamer, blocks Finch in the hallway, waiting to pick a fight. Amanda, Joe Wyatt, and Ryan are there. Finch, who feels a familiar anger from a past encounter with Roamer, counts to sixty, determined not to get detention. 

After school, Finch can’t explain to his best friends, Charlie and Brenda Shank-Kravitz, where he has been or that he was Asleep. He appreciates that they don’t require an explanation. In the distance, he sees Violet, who had smiled at Theodore Freak, Resident Aberration. 

Once home, Finch writes about suicide by jumping. Search results for Violet Markey lead Finch to EleanorandViolet.com, and a news article describing the car accident that killed Eleanor, her sister. Finch creates a Facebook account and sends Violet a friend request. 
After dinner with his mom and eight-year old sister, Decca, Finch finds that Violet has accepted his friend request. As they message back and forth, Finch imagines her smiling. He makes up a tune and lyrics on his guitar. Today it is good to be Awake.

Summary: Chapter 4: Finch’s Rules for Wandering

For Finch, life is already full of too many rules. He lists three guidelines for the class wandering project to send to Violet: no phones, alternate choosing where to go, leave something at each site.

Analysis: Chapters 3 & 4

Finch and Violet’s time in class further illuminates the social differences between them, and makes it clear that Finch is not part of the upper echelon that Violet inhabits. Violet’s status as a popular girl is evident in the praise she receives from her classmates, and when she describes Finch as “the worst person she could have saved,” she is referring not to his worthiness, but to his status as unpopular. Because Finch is unpopular, he feels uncomfortable as the center of even positive attention, but his newly heightened awareness of Violet allows him to summon the bravery to suppress his own anger and refrain from engaging with Roamer. Like the inciting incident at the bell tower, this confrontation with Roamer is another instance in which Finch is surrounded by classmates who do not try to help him, and confirms his status as an outcast at school.

In establishing Violet as his lone Facebook friend, Finch uses an impersonal device to establish a more intimate relationship that he can explore in solitude and develop in his own way. Given the public nature of social media and the fact that many people use it as a platform for bullying, it is ironic that Finch chooses this method of communication, but it allows him to put a layer of protection between himself and Violet and gives him the space to operate alone in his own environment where he feels safe. Finch also creates his Rules for Wandering in solitude, which along with the handful of other short chapters he narrates, reveals how he views the world. Finch wants to find the beauty of Indiana instead of trying to escape its mundanity. His guidelines both set the tone for his and Violet’s subsequent outings and highlight the different ways in which the two of them move through life. Violet takes a scattershot approach as she ticks all of the expected boxes. In this way, she attempts to appear normal and stay under the radar. Finch’s rules ensure that their outings will commence in a very deliberate way, but his goal is to achieve a surprising and extraordinary outcome. When he incorporates the private ritual of leaving something behind each time, it hints at both the intimacy and the secrecy that the two will come to share.