The two boys become close friends, but throughout their friendship Gene is jealous of Finny. Gene excels in academics, while Finny is fun and great athlete. Finny is the leader in the friendship and Gene feels that Finny is very controlling almost bullying him. Gene and Finny are both competitive, but Genes thinks that Finny wants to compete with him in everything. Gene is the protagonist in the story due to his competitive nature and his jealousy of Finny.
Finny being anaturally born athlete, and Gene being more academically based. At first they seemed to hit itoff, he invited him to do things with all of his friends and just the two of them. Gene willinglywent if it didn’t interfere with his academics. One day, Finny tells
They are supposed to be best friends, but Gene envies him and thinks he is trying to make him look bad. After Finny’s accident, Gene struggled with guilt and his life was changed because of it. “I spent as much time as I could alone in our room, trying to empty my mind of every thought, to forget where I was, even who I was. One evening when I was dressing for dinner in this numbed frame of mind, an idea occurred to me, the first with any energy behind it since Finny fell from the tree. I decided to put on his clothes” (Knowles 29).
As it can be noted by Finny’s actions after he finally came to terms that Gene was responsible for making him fall out of the tree, his anger was virtually uncontrollable. Between Finny’s lack of concept for individuals to make devious and harmful decisions, and his distaste for competition, he often felt that it would be wrong to put others down for one’s own glory. For Finny, the realization that people can be evil, was far too much to bear rationally. This realization created a deep cognitive dissonance within Finny, as Finny always tried to look for the positives of situations and give people the benifit of
Sometimes the boys would skip class or go to the beach illegally or they would even use their fake IDs to buy beer. On day Finny told Gene they were going to be doing a double jump and just like always Finny and Gene would start the jump first, but that day Finny fell off the tree and broke his leg. Finny had to go back home but Gene had to go to school. Leper had moved away, and Brinker was in a room across from Gene. Brinker said it was Gene plan all along to get Finny out of his room.
Gene is already upset over Finny keeping his distance but now that he caused Finny to fall a second time which leads to his death he is broken. During the trial Finny yell at Brinker then abruptly leave, rushing down the stairs, he falls which everyone hears from the courtroom (John Knowles). After the second fall Finny is taken to a different area which Gene Finds. Finny forgives Gene then, he dies due to bone marrow going into the blood stream. Gene cannot forgive himself even though Finny forgave him.
Finny not being able to play sports anymore that meant Gene was next in line for the top athlete at Devon. In addition, this incident leads to Finny having several health issues and dying towards the end of the novel. Gene knew that Finny had no admirations towards him and that made him angered. Gene was hurt when Finn died but he still didn’t change once he went to war or when he came back to visit Devon in his elder years. “He had never been jealous of me for a second.
Finny is the athletic one, the best athlete in school even. Also he is handsome and is easy to get along with. As the boys stay close, Finny starts having Gene play more games, so that means less time for Gene to study for school. One day Gene wakes up at dawn on the beach with Finny. He immediately realizes that he has an exam at ten am, so he tells Finny that they need to
One of these ways is when Gene jounced the limb of a tree while climbing with his friend resulting of Finny with a broken leg. “Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled side-ways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud” (Knowles 60). Gene blames himself for Finny’s fall. Finny does not believe it is Gene but with all the built up envy and anger, he broke his best friend. This is just the beginning of Gene’s path to losing himself.
After Finny’s death, Gene even declares that “nothing … had broken [Finny’s] harmonious and natural unity” (Knowles 203). Since Gene exclaims this, the reader understands that Finny