The pictures hung above Gene's bed represents Gene's inability to come to terms with his own identity, and they show how unreliable Gene is. After dinner one night, Gene observes his room, and carefully examines the walls. He describes how Finny has taped newspapers above his cot, and he describes the pictures he had taped above his own cot. He had a plantation mansion, trees by moonlight, and roads passing by cabins of Negroes hung up. Gene thought to himself, "Over my cot I had long ago taped pictures which together amounted to a barefaced lie about my background.... I had acquired an accent appropriate to a town three states south of my own, and I had transmitted the impression... that this was the old family place," (Knowles 156). When Gene had come to Devon, he was so insecure that he lied about his background and made up a lie about where he was from. He even created an entirely different accent to make his story more believable. This shows that Gene has major self-esteem issues, and desperately wants to fit in with everyone else, even if it means lying about his true personality. This also shows how willing Gene is to lie, and how was he says can't be trusted. This makes the reader question what Gene has said earlier in the book, and the reader becomes extremely suspicious of Gene in general. Gene then says, "But by now I no longer needed this vivid false identity: now I was acquiring, I felt, a sense of my own real authority and worth, I had had many new experiences and I was growing up," (Knowles 156). This quote shows that through all the situations that he has had to endure lately he has realized his true identity and is starting to see his place and value in the world. This reminds me of when you're meeting someone for the first time and you ask questions to get to know them better. If they feel embarrassed about something in their life, or find that it's not "cool," most people lie about that aspect of their life to fit in better. Gene has extreme difficulty expressing who he really is, and he is an extremely unreliable person who lies about everything he doesn't want to admit to people.
Do you think Gene has lied about anything else in the book so far? Why?
I agree that Gene is struggling to find his identity and how it is because of Finny. I think Gene has lied to himself throughout the entire book, because if he hadn't, Finny wouldn't except him as his friend. For example on page 127, "He drew me increasingly away from the Butt Room crowd, away from Brinker and Chet and all the other friends, into a world inhabited by just himself and me" (Knowles 127). In this quote we see Finny's influence on Gene, forcing him to tend to his own needs to the point where Gene doesn't have a choice. Until Finny is out of the picture, Gene won't be able to find himself.
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