Gene is comparing World War II with the war at Devon because
his competitiveness at Devon was like a war. At Devon, Gene was on “active
duty” (Knowles 204), which meant that he was participating in the war at Devon.
The war at school was with Finny and himself. The war with Finny started with
Gene’s enmity towards him. During the summer when Gene is unsure about how he
should look at Finny, he thinks to himself, “…You and Finny are even already.
You are even in enmity” (Knowles 53). Gene believes that they are both rivals
and competitive with each other. Yet, at the end of the book, Gene realizes
that Finny didn’t have any enemies. The war with Gene’s feelings started with
his jealousy then went to guilt from the incident in the tree. The war with his
feelings and the war with Finny lead up to Gene jouncing the branch, which
knocks Finny off the tree. Gene didn’t physically cause Finny to die but he was
responsible for his death. This is why Gene says, “I killed my enemy at Devon”
(Knowles 204), even though he says earlier that he never killed anyone. This
contradiction reflects Gene’s conflicted feelings about his responsibility for
Finny’s death. Gene says that the fact that people block off their enemies causes
them to attack back, which eventually leads to a war.
Monday, May 9, 2016
Assignment #12) What does Gene mean when he says “I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war end before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there” (204). Who/what is his enemy? Why does he contradict himself there? What was his war? (Emily)
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I agree that Gene contradicted himself when talking about the "war at Devon" and "killing his enemy" due to the fact that he has conflicted feelings about whether or not he killed Finny. However, I also feel that this is because he still thinks he is a part of Finny. When the two boys began to live in their own little bubble of peace at Devon, they became more like each other. Even more so, it is as if they became the same person. This continues at Finny's funeral when Gene says, "I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case." (Knowles 194) After Finny's death, Gene began to slowly break apart from what he had with Finny because Finny is now gone, but this also means that now a piece of Gene is gone. He can't tell if he is Finny, buried in the ground, or Gene, ready to head off to the real war.
ReplyDeleteI think that when Gene says "He killed his enemy" it means he killed Finny. The war that went on at the campus was Gene's battle versus guilt, and all the time Gene spent at his college, he was battling guilt. When he killed Finny (kind of), he killed his "enemy" in the war.
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