Gene is interested in enlisting in the army because he is attracted to the idea of leaving everything behind, including his problematic friendship with Finny. Gene is thinking about enlisting in the war on his way back from shoveling railroad yards. “To enlist. To slam the door impulsively on the past” (Knowles 100). For Gene, the war is an escape. An escape from having to face his protected, ‘conventional’ reality, and having to deal with the guilt of causing Finny’s injury, because ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ If Gene won’t have to see Finny every day at the Devon School, then he will stop thinking about him, and the harshness of the guilt will be lessened. Joining the war means escaping from every emotion Gene feels while attending the Devon School with Finny and his shattered leg. In this same context, he fantasizes: "...Domestic white and schoolboy blue, all those tangled strands which required the dexterity of a virtuoso to keep flowing - I yearned to take giant military shears to it, snap! bitten off in an instant, and nothing left in my hands but spools of khaki" (Knowles 100). Gene uses this metaphor to describe how fighting in the war would be his way out of his complicated, prestigious, first-world life at Devon. Joining the war offers Gene a chance at a new beginning, where he can forget his past, and get involved in something out of the norm.
I agree that Gene's perspective on enlisting in the war has changed because he has realized that he wants to leave everything at Devon behind. After the peace of the Summer Session, the Winter Session soon became a disappointment, between the tension of the war and the fact that Gene was forced to live with his guilt about what he did to Finny. In addition, I think that Gene realizes, for the first time in a long time, that he is independent. He realizes that he can make decisions for himself and that he does not have to be bound to someone like Finny. "I reckoned my responsibilities by the light of the unsentimental night sky and knew that I owed no one anything. I owed it to myself to meet this crisis in my life when I chose, and I chose now." (Knowles 102) Gene was being held back by wanting to fit in and to be at the top of his class. After being given some time at Devon without Finny to straighten out his own thoughts, he now knows of his own true desires. It will be interesting to see what happens now that Finny has returned to Devon and Gene has already made up his mind.
ReplyDeleteI think that Gene's perspective on enlisting has not only changed, but the sudden change in his personality has lead to him to believe that enlisting is the only way to right his wrongs. By hurting Finny, his best friend, he lost a piece of himself. This is seen again when he gets into a fight with Quackenbush, and gives up another part of himself to his new "persona." This feeling of loss is illustrated when after Gene's fight with Quackenbush when he says, "I didn't want to add to his humiliations, I even sympathized with him," (Knowles 78). This not only illustrates his immense pain, but the confusion caused by his actions. By enlisting in the war he can turn his back on the pain, but also do something good to counteract all of his deplorable acts and hopefully gain back the pieces of himself.
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