Summary
Finny’s leg has been shattered in the fall from the tree.
Everyone talks to Gene about the injury in the following days but
no one suspects him of any wrongdoing. No one is allowed to see
Finny at the infirmary. Gene spends an increasing amount of time
alone in his room, questioning himself. One day, he decides to put
on Finny’s shoes, pants, and pink shirt. When he looks in the mirror,
he sees himself as Finny, and a wave of relief comes over him. The
feeling of transformation lasts through the night but is gone in
the morning, and Gene is confronted once more with what he has caused, whether
or not deliberately, to happen to Finny.
That morning after chapel, Dr. Stanpole tells Gene that
Finny is feeling better and could use a visit. He says that Finny’s
leg will recover enough for him to walk again but that he will no
longer be able to play sports. Gene bursts into tears and the doctor
tries to comfort him, saying that he must be strong for Finny. He
notes that Finny asked to see Gene specifically, from which Gene
concludes that Finny must want to accuse him to his face. Gene goes
in to see Finny but, before expressing any of his own ideas about
what happened, asks Finny what his memories of the incident are.
Finny says that something made him lose his balance and that he
looked over to Gene to see if he could reach him. Gene recoils violently
and accuses Finny of wanting to drag him down with him. Finny explains
calmly that he wanted merely to keep from falling. Gene then states
that he tried to catch hold of Finny but that Finny fell away too
fast. Finny tells him that he has the same shocked facial expression
now that he did on the tree.
Gene asks if Finny recalls what made him lose his balance
in the first place. Finny hints that he had a vague notion that
Gene was the cause, but he refuses to accept this idea and apologizes
for even considering it. Gene realizes that if the roles were reversed,
Finny would tell him the truth about his possible involvement. He
rises quickly and tells Finny that he has something terrible to
say to him. Just then, however, Dr. Stanpole enters, and Gene is
sent away. The next day, the doctor decides that Finny is not well
enough to receive visitors; soon after, an ambulance takes Finny
to his home outside Boston. The summer session ends, and Gene goes
home to the South for a month’s vacation.
In September, Gene starts for Devon by train and is delayed
considerably. He catches a taxi at Boston’s South Station, but instead
of taking it to North Station for the last leg of the trip to Devon,
he proceeds to Finny’s house. He finds Finny propped up before a
fireplace with hospital-type pillows. Finny is pleased to see him,
though not surprised, and asks about his vacation. Gene recounts
a story about a fire back home and then says that he was thinking
a lot about Finny and the accident while at home. He now tells Finny
that he deliberately shook the limb to make him fall. Finny refuses
to believe him and grows furious. Gene realizes that he has injured Finny
further with his confession and that he must take back his words,
though he cannot do it now. Finny says that he will return to Devon
by Thanksgiving.
Analysis
It is significant that the first thing that Gene records
himself doing after the tragedy is putting on Finny’s clothes and
mimicking Finny’s expressions in the mirror. This bizarre act symbolizes
the extent to which Gene has blurred, and continues to blur, the
line that separates his own identity from that of his best friend.
To alleviate his guilt about his involvement in the fall, he seeks
to escape his very self and find refuge in someone else’s clothing,
someone else’s identity. Moreover, while becoming Finny allows Gene
to escape his own guilty conscience, it also enables him to eradicate
the feelings at the base of that guilt. Gene feels guilty about
the accident because he knows how envious he was of Finny and cannot
help but think that this envy somehow influenced his actions, even
if only on a subconscious level. By dressing up as Finny, however,
Gene purges himself of this envy by becoming the object of it.
It is again Gene’s desire to be like Finny, or actually
to be Finny, that sparks his confession: he admits what he thinks
is his wrongdoing after realizing that Finny would have done the
same were he in Gene’s position. Ironically, Finny himself has no
interest in Gene’s declaration. In a sense, he is in denial; he
has suspected a similar version of events—or so we assume from what
he says to Gene about his “crazy idea” that Gene himself caused
the fall—but he refuses to admit such a possibility. His life altered
forever by the accident, Finny seems to need something to latch
onto, and he latches onto his friendship with Gene. The relationship
becomes the center of his life, especially once he returns to Devon
in later chapters. Finny feels an increasing necessity to ignore
the relationship’s unpleasant aspects.
