While Finny likes to defy authority, play games, and jump out of trees — all of these essentially childish activities — Gene, by contrast, wants to become an adult and feels that he should learn how to live in the grown-up world. His basic nature points him in the direction of conventionality and conformity, and his instincts make him fear Finny's youthful spontaneity as dangerous — and yet also dangerously attractive. As the chapter unfolds, Gene feels more and more caught in the irresistible pull of Finny's spontaneous nature, as well as his charismatic power to inspire people by creating his own imaginative world out of nothing more than his own whims. But Finny's ease at convincing others of his ideas also secretly galls Gene, who finds himself "unexpectedly" wishing to see his friend punished for his easy, winning ways of escaping trouble. Finny's pink shirt stands as the central symbol of the chapter, the expression of his unique gift for making things mean what he wants them to mean. He chooses the pink shirt carelessly, as he does all his clothes, but once he puts it on, his inventive mind conjures up a reality for it that defies challenge, even when Gene offers his own typically conventional interpretation that people will think Finny is a "fairy." Finny calmly rejects Gene's objection and proposes instead his own eccentric idea, bridging the gap between reality and his whim with effortless grace. The pink shirt, he declares, is an "emblem" to celebrate the beginning of the Allied bombing of Central Europe. At Mr. Patch-Withers' tea party, Finny's pink shirt — with the emblematic nature he ascribes to it — becomes his passport into the formal adult …show more content…
When Finny, in an imaginative reversal, declares his belief that there is no bombing in Europe, Gene comes to share in Finny's vision of a world set apart from conflict. As the two boys cross the forested campus on their way to the river, Gene gazes up at the sheltering elm trees, which seem to him to extend endlessly into the heavens and northward almost indefinitely. For Gene, at this moment, Devon — the "tame fringe of the last and greatest wilderness" — becomes a kind of Eden, where the thought of war seems impossible, even absurd.
But in the midst of this Eden, there already lurks deep in Gene's heart a type of original sin — his growing envy and resentment of Finny. Finny, though, remains unaware of his friend's true feelings and proposes that they climb the tree again and make the jump together. He means this double jump as a ritual act of friendship — a way of sealing the bond of their "partnership."
What happens next, on the limb before the boys jump, foreshadows the central dramatic event of the novel (in Chapter 4). Suddenly, Gene loses his balance — physically, of course, but symbolically, too — and Finny instinctively grasps his friend's hand to balance him and save him from