Brinker’s visit to Gene and Finny’s room occasions a physical description
of the bedroom walls for the first time. We learn that Finny has
hung a picture of Roosevelt and Churchill, representing, to him,
the fat, old men who have created the war. More important, however,
the description gives us new insight into Gene. Gene has hung a
picture of a southern plantation, which, he notes, constitutes a
“bald-faced lie,” part of a false identity that he assumed when
he first came to Devon. Although he is from the upper South, Gene recounts
that he had initially faked an accent from a state far south of
his own and given the impression that the sentimental photograph
showed his house. This insight into Gene’s prior deceit puts the
reader on the alert; the picture of the plantation becomes a symbol
of Gene’s unreliability as a source of information about his own life,
a symbol of his inability to come to terms with his own identity. We
wonder how accurately Gene has narrated the scene of Finny’s fall
and the events surrounding it; like Brinker, we become increasingly
suspicious.
The meaning of Finny’s remark to Gene, amid discussion
of Leper, that he needs to trust Gene and believe him because he
knows Gene better than he knows anyone else is ambiguous. One can
argue that Knowles is suggesting ironically how little Finny really
knows Gene, that he is completely oblivious to Gene’s earlier pettiness
and Gene’s role in his accident. One can also argue that Knowles
is implying that Finny knows everything—that he simply chooses to overlook
the evidence against Gene because of his extreme dependence on him
and need to love him.
The issues touched upon in these scenes now emerge in
full force with Brinker’s makeshift trial. The trial scene constitutes
the final victory of the winter session over the summer session,
of Brinker’s desire for truth and justice over Finny and Gene’s
desire to preserve innocence and keep reality at bay. Brinker clearly
believes that he is doing the right thing; one can argue that he
is serving the interests of an abstractly defined justice. But while
justice is supposed to be blind, as Gene notes, the only thing to
which Brinker seems blind is Finny’s lack of interest in having
the truth extracted. This shying away from discovery is obvious
in the way Finny describes the events: he deliberately recounts
that Gene was at the bottom of the tree in order to deflect guilt
away from his friend. It is left to the half-mad Leper to tell what
really happened and finally break down Finny’s wall of denial. Again,
we wonder about Leper’s inner psychology and motives: “I’m important
too,” he tells the tribunal; in a sense, he seems to be exacting
his revenge on Finny and Gene for the closeness of their friendship
and for the fact that he was not part of it.
Just as in the initial portrayal of the scene of Finny’s
fall, Gene’s narration breaks down at the crucial moments. In the
scene of the fall, the reader is given an account of the external
steps leading to the disaster but not of the inner processes unfolding
in Gene’s mind. Similarly, when Brinker now interrogates the boys,
Gene narrates the external facts of the scene but refuses to portray
his reactions: we witness neither fear, nor anger, nor even resignation.
Except for brief calculations about whether people will believe
Leper, Gene treats the terribly important events going on around
him with a bizarre lack of emotion. This quality compels us once
again to ponder how reliable a narrator Gene is; we must continually
question the accuracy of his portrayals and analyze the story for
ourselves, reading between the lines.
