#1 Gene visits two specific places upon his return: the First Academy Building and the tree. Name and explain two specific things he notices/realizes about these places/things now (as opposed to then) and why Knowles might have done this. (Cameron)
Gene, the narrator, returns to Devon School fifteen years after he was a student there. Gene now notices things about his old school and its campus that he did not notice when he lived there. When he visits the First Academy Building, he reaches the foyer and stops at the long, white marble stairs. He notices that the marble must be unusually hard. "That seemed very likely, only too likely, although with all my thought about these stairs this exceptional hardness had not occurred to me. It was surprising that I had overlooked that, that crucial fact" (Knowles, 11). Knowles might have done this to show how Gene has changed in relation to the stairs. Gene realizes that he feels older, taller, more successful and secure than when he was at school. Gene hopes that, since the buildings had achieved harmony with the past, he could as well, or maybe he already has achieved this growth and harmony himself without even knowing it. The second place Gene had come to see was the tree. He notices that the tree "...seemed weary from age, enfeebled, dry" (Knowles, 14). By seeing the tree, he realizes that the more things remain the same, the more things change. The tree symbolizes, for Gene, "... the giants of your childhood..." who seem so much smaller and older in relation to your life as you grow up (Knowles, 14). Knowles expresses Gene's transition from a boy to a man by using these places as time capsules. Gene notes that these two places were "fearful sights," but now since they seem older and smaller, he is not afraid of them any longer. Gene then realizes how much fear he was living in before, which means that he has escaped from that fear.
I agree with Cameron's last point about Gene looking back on how he lived in fear. His remembrance of the school seems negative and chaotic. Knowles writes: "perhaps varnish, along with everything else, had gone to war" (9). This shows he has reflected on the school. He remembers the school very differently than it seems now. He sees it in a negative way full of turmoil and fear, and I think fear will be an important theme in Gene's life at Devon and how he manages living at a boarding school during WW2. These places like the tree and the stairs, along with the times, have changed in Gene's mind because he is older, and I think that it was Cameron and Knowles are both trying to get at.
ReplyDeleteWhen Gene returns to the Devon School 15 years later, he has two very specific places that he wishes to visit. However, upon his return, it isn’t the two specific places that elicit his deepest feelings and emotion, but instead Gene is stirred by the overall “varnished” look that the school now has. Gene describes the school as looking as if it has a “glossy new surface” which in turn makes the school look like a museum. This museum like feeling is exactly what Gene does not want the Devon School to represent. A museum is a place to preserve artifacts, and if done well; a museum may even preserve feelings and emotion from a certain time or era. It seems that this preservation in both look and feel is powerful and undesirable for Gene. Gene eloquently puts this in perspective upon his return to Devon when he notes, “I had always felt that the Devon School came into existence the day I entered it, was vibrantly real while was a student there, and then blinked out like a candle the day I left” (p. 9-10). This egocentric perspective is very important in foreshadowing and understanding Gene’s coming of age story at the Devon School.
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