The significance of Gene and Finny’s training is that Gene has finally accepted to let Finny live vicariously through him (athletic wise). The reason why Gene finally lets Finny train him is that he has gained confidence in his abilities and doesn’t see Finny as a “threat” and because he wants to be there for Finny since he was the cause of his Finny’s sports-preventing injury. Gene shows his guilt towards injuring Finny when he thought about how “[Finny] had seemed to drift along with no effort at all...But the thought was there before me that [Finny] would never walk like that again” (Knowles 111). Gene isn’t just being trained by Finny to satisfy his own guilt but he also starts to genuinely find his passion for sports again. Throughout chapter eight Finny also tries to keep Gene close and away from enlisting in the war in two ways. The first way is Finny setting Gene’s training goal as participating in the 1944 Olympics (something that Finny had always aimed for). Finny could have given this goal to Gene so he has something to work towards other than becoming a soldier. This goal also allows Finny to have some way to participate in athletics and reach for his own past Olympic goal. *Finny reminds me of a parent in the classic situation where the parent wants the child to complete a goal that they were never able to complete.* The second way Finny tries to prevent Gene from enlisting is by convincing himself and Gene that the war is all made up. Finny says to Gene “The fat old men who don’t want us crowding them out of the jobs. They’ve made it all up” (Knowles 115). Throughout the chapter, Finny brings up how the war is all fake in hopes to prevent Gene from wanting to enlist. They now have a different kind of dependency on each other than from the beginning of the book.
In some ways, Gene’s guilt and a boost in confidence, as well as Finny’s fear of Gene enlisting in the war, has further tightened their relationship.
* = Sorry Ms. Tarshis for the 1st person, I just had to include my thought
Why do you think that Finny shares his deeper feelings and struggles with Gene? Why do you think Gene doesn’t?
I think Gene still has this dark side of him that he had since the beginning of the book. I feel that Gene is still comparing himself to Finny and why he doesn't want to share his deeper feelings is because that will reveal that he finally feels that he has an advantage against Finny. Earlier in the book Gene was saying they are even, "You and Phineas are even already...Finny had deliberately set out"(Knowles 53). Now that Finny can't do sports, Gene is fighting between feeling guilty and also feeling like he finally won in this "competition."
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