The Classics discussion

For discussion of the end.

"I killed my enemy here."

I admit I was feeling a little lost by the end. I started out somewhat in sympathy with Gene. Jealousy is hard. I kind of figured he meant to startle Finny so that he would fall earlier into the water or something - not intending to really HURT him. But by the end of the book, I no longer felt that was true.

My main impression of Knowles' intent was the message that boys didn't even have to go to war to have their lives destroyed by it. Would Gene have had those feelings if the aura of violence hadn't been present already?

I doubt it.

I liked the book but was expecting more. I felt like I was always being kept on the sidelines. Yes we go into Gene's thoughts but I was expecting more of the school experience to show a contrast to the war.

I did like how Knowles made the war seem like a distant irritation, the mosquito you can hear but not find in the middle of the night.

I believe making war so distant was much of the main point. I liked the general idea of the novel itself, but I agree that it definately should've had more.

I don't know how I feel about Gene but I do know that things got out of hand more because of Brinker than Gene. Finny was still alive and sane after he fell from the tree. It was only with the second fall - caused by Brinker - that everything really got messed up. In fact, I believe Gene did a good job trying to fix his mistake. He tried to confess to Finny, bu wouldn't be heard. He then realized the truth would hurt Finny more than the fall (which it did) and so decided to move on and try to make Finny's life still happy even though he could no longer play.

I'm not saying Gene was exactly faultless in this story, but I definately feel he deserves our sympathy.

Interesting. I saw Brinker as trying to ferret out the truth - not wanting Gene or Finny to sweep things under the rug. Like I said, I had turned around on Gene, I thought he could have forced himself to have been heard while at Finny's house and explained it as the 'temporary feeling idea' that Finny came up with on his own later. Of course, he should have explained right off the bat in the first place - Finny was trying to understand what happened then, but the fact that he did neither made me see him as dishonest. I was frustrated by the feeling that he compounded that by continuing to play Olympics with Finny too. I feared for Finny - I wasn't sure Gene wouldn't do something else. In the end, I felt Brinker's fact finding wouldn't have been necessary and, thus led to disaster by extension, if they had aired it all out between them. I might feel some sympathy for Gene, but his lack of action just couldn't sustain it for me.

But I agree about being on the sidelines. We see some of Gene's feelings but never get the whole story. I thought that might have been a little manipulation on the part of Knowles to keep the narrator unpredictable.

I didn't get the impression that Gene didn't try to get it out in the open originally. He wrestled the indident over in his mind then took a train all the way to Finny's house, dealt with the awkwardness for a while and then tried to explain that he (meaning Gene) had actually made Finny fall. As I said before, and as I thought was made rather clear in the narrative, Finny did not want to hear that his best friend had actually made him fall and had ruined his chance of a sporting career. I agree with this too because it would be difficult news to hear. Gene, in my opinion did the right thing for the moment by not telling Finny. I agree that it should eventually be made known to Finny, but certainly not the way Brinker did it. I also fully believe that Gene - being a very self-loathing man - would certainly have revealed the truth again later. As it was though, the truth was slapped in Finny's face just because Brinker wanted to be the brilliant man who discovered the truth. Gene was really only a man caught way too deep in a very tragic accident. The jouncing may have been on purpose, but it was not intending to the extent it became. For this reason, Gene is still, in my eyes, worthy of our sympathy and certainly is not to blame for Finny's death.

Gene doesn't seem the kind of person to push an issue. It seems like it was hard enough for him to get up the courage to go and see Finney while in his cast. Then, when he tried explaining to him and Finney wouldn't hear it, he just gave up and took the easy way out.

I wouldn't say the easy way. It was clear when I read it that he was tortured daily by the truth... even without Brinker's involvement.