Thursday, May 2, 2019
How does Gene feel about war and enlisting in this reading (look closely at pages 100-102)? Rohan
Gene feels slightly reluctant, but mostly ready and willing to enlist to fight in the war. After they are done clearing the railroad tracks, Brinker states “Im giving it up, I'm going to enlist. Tomorrow.” (Knowles 100). Brinker’s statement sparks an idea in Gene’s mind, and he later in the book starts thinking about enlisting. After Brinker said he wanted to enlist, Gene goes on to think “I yearned to take military shears to it, snap!” (Knowles 100) as he compares his life to a colourful weave. Gene feels like he wants to enlist in the war, and he feels like going to war would take his mind off his problems, like Finny and Devon. He later states that “There was always something deadly lurking is anything I wanted” (Knowles 101), and he knows that the war is going to be tough, and even deadly but he still wants to go. He is willing to take this risk of war to take his mind off all the things that are happening around him, and he just wants a simpler path to go down.
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I agree with Rohan, but I also think that there is more to why Gene wants to enlist. Gene has always had low- self worth and never felt like he had a purpose. When he thinks about Finny, he can’t help but automatically value Finny’s life over his own and fall back into that mindset of low-self worth. He connects the pieces of his personality of finding something “deadly” in everything he loves and for the first time he is not trying to remove or fix that piece of him, yet embracing it. He finally begins to find his self worth in something he loves, although it is a grim love- he accepts that he loves the thrill of anything deadly. At the end of chapter 7, Gene begins getting more excited to enlist and find his calling, “the light of the unsentimental night sky and I knew that I owed no one anything. I owed it to myself…”(Knowles 102). After Gene walks up the stairs to his room and sees Finny, his self worth fades and he says, “Everything that happened throughout the say faded… Phineas was back” (Knowles 102). Gene doesn’t want to hold the responsibility of what he did to Finny beasue when he is with Finny his worth becomes dependent and he falls back into a cycle of guilt for Finny. He wants to run away to the war, to take his life back and try to forget about everything he has done and finally become his own hero, but when he comes face to face with Finny he is brought back into the reality of what he has done, and what he has to live with. His guilt and his best friend.
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