In the book A Separate Peace, the snowball fight in chapter 11 mirrors the trial that is held later in the chapter. In this chapter, Gene has just come back from visiting Leper and is looking for Finny when he finds him and other students having a snowball fight. At first, Gene stands at the edge of the field and watches but he soon gets sucked into the game. This is a lot like how at the beginning of the trial Gene doesn't want any part of it, but he soon finds himself making comments to defend himself. The snowball fight starts with two teams fighting against each other, but soon the teams start to break down. Gene recalls Finny switching teams many times, and not knowing who was fighting against who. Gene said “Loyalties became hopelessly entangled. No one was going to win or lose after all.” (Knowles 154) This is similar to how in the trial there is no one winner. The snowball fight ends with everyone turning on Finny and pelting him with snowballs, and by the end of the trial, the sides are too mixed up for either one to win and Finny storms out after saying he “just doesn't care”. In the trial, Finny is the one who is affected badly.
I agree with what you said here, but I think it is important to touch on the fact that during the trial, everyone was against Finny and Gene. At the beginning of the fight, Finny is on one side with other people besides Gene. But at the trial, Gene and Finny were completely alone. On the other hand, at both the snowball fight and the trial people start going against both Finny and Gene
ReplyDeleteI agree with Grace, but I also think Finny and Gene’s relationship is foreshadowed in the snowball fight. Like Grace mentioned Gene noticed how Finny kept switching sides to the point where Gene didn’t know which side he was on. Finny’s spontaneous actions continued to surprise Gene throughout the game.
ReplyDeleteWhen Finny suddenly revealed that he had actually really wanted to enlist in the war this shocked Gene. Gene didn’t realize how serious Finny was until he said: “I’ll hate it everywhere if I’m not in this war!” (Knowles 190). While we thought that Finny didn’t want Gene to leave for the war, really his motives were self-based (awkward word, but I can’t find a better word to capture what I am trying to say). In a way, I think that the snowball scene and Finny telling Gene that he wanted to enlist shows a little bit of a selfish side to Finny.