#9 Question 2: Explore the difference between what ‘escape’ means to Gene as opposed to what it means to Leper (see usage in the context in the middle of page 143). (Cameron)
The word "escape" has different meanings in the worlds that Leper and Gene live in. Gene thinks about 'escape' rationally, and when he reads the telegram that Leper sent, he assumes that Leper had escaped from spies. Gene "accepted a hopeful interpretation" and figured that the most logical thing Leper had escaped from was "...danger, death, the enemy" (Knowles 140). Gene believes that there is no way to physically escape from the army, but Leper had found a way to escape from the army by being declared insane. For Gene, 'escape' also means to flee from something or someone to get to safety. Instead of escaping from spies, though, Leper has been given a "Section 8 Discharge" which is "for nuts in the service" and he has left the Army for being psychotic (Knowles 144). For Leper, 'escape' means to hide from reality and to shelter himself from the rest of the world. Even though Leper seems as though he is insane, he explains to Gene how he learned a lot about himself over the last few weeks and about trying to please his parents all the time. He then calls out Gene for knocking Finny out of the tree and says that Gene is a "...savage underneath" (Knowles 145). This shows that, even though Leper has escaped the army due to his nerves, he still knows what's happening at Devon and still knows how to think logically.
Questions:
1. Do you think Leper is insane or do you think he acted that way on purpose to escape the army?
2. Do you think that Gene starts to feel that he is responsible for what happened to Leper? Does the cut leg in Leper's visions symbolize what happened to Finny?
Gene tries to believe that Leper has 'escaped' in his sense of the word for as long as he can, until he realizes that Leper was, in fact, running away. While journeying to Leper's house, he thinks "You didn't 'escape' from the army, so he must have escaped from something else," (Knowles, 140). Later, when Gene talks to Leper, he realizes that Leper was in fact, escaping from the army, because he could not bear to be there, with the inside-out-ness of it all, and the prospect of fighting. Gene tries to use his definition of escape because he wants to fool himself into believing that the war will be fine. Coming to terms with the fact that the war could actually have driven Leper to mental illness is too much for Gene to bear. Gene tries to hide himself from the reality of what war is by using a different definition of 'escape' than Leper does.
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