What is the purpose of Brinker Hadley's 'trial'?

• A. To expel a student.
• B. To assess academic performance.
• C. To organize the annual war memorial.
• D. To publicly search for truth about Finny's accident and enforce accountability, revealing the power of social pressure.

Answer: (D)

Brinker Hadley’s trial is a social experiment in accountability within a closed community. The aim is not just to assign blame in a private sense, but to publicly uncover what happened to Finny and to press someone to take responsibility in the eyes of the Devon boys. By staging a formal, quasi-legal inquiry, Brinker mobilizes the group’s standards of fairness, truth-telling, and moral duty, using public scrutiny to compel answers. The process reveals how powerful peer pressure can be in shaping what “the truth” feels like and in forcing someone—Gene, in the developing tension of the scene—to confront his role. The trial thus exposes the dynamics of loyalty, guilt, and social codes at Devon, showing that justice within this world is as much about collective opinion and ritual as about objective facts. It’s not about expelling a student, evaluating grades, or organizing a memorial; it’s about using a ritual of accountability to expose who is responsible and to demonstrate how social pressure can steer outcomes and reveal underlying truths.