Finny's death is not surprising; there are many times in A Separate Peace that lead us to think that Finny will not age as a regular person but must die. Throughout the book we see finny’s personality is very strong and loving. A person like him could not go to war and return the same. “Phineas, you wouldn't be any good in the war, even if nothing had happened to your leg." (Knowles, 190). Gene has an image of Finny in which he cannot take conflict seriously and always finds a way to become friends with the enemy. Gene even says to him, “You’d get things so scrambled up nobody would would know who to fight any more.” (Knowles, 191). The accident on the stairs is a logical climax because Finny is too perfect of a person to be ruined by the war. Gene and the other boys such as Leper and Brinker are affected by the war in normal ways ,but Finny is untouched. He was always the best athlete, the most fun person, and the boy with the biggest heart. “Smart lad, to slip betimes away /From fields where glory does not stay” ( To an Athlete Dying Young, A.E Housman). The athlete in this poem, like Finny, dies before his records are broken. Experienced soldiers know that not all of war is glory, but Finny died before realizing it and experiencing the loss of his own abilities. The climax of the novel, when Finny falls down the stairs, is appropriate because Finny was not the type of person to go to war even if he had not broken his leg. He will always remain in Gene’s mind as a role model.
Do you think that if Phineas and Gene went to war together it would be an appropriate ending?
Could Finny have died in the battlefield? How would Gene have reacted?
I agree with Mario that Finnys death doesn't surprise me, the reader, at all. Throughout the book Finny is shown as this happy, loving person and someone who is almost blocking all the boys at the school from seeing what the war is really like. So you could see his death coming when the war came because all the boys were starting to see and enlist in the war so Finny dying was almost showing this transition from peace to the war. Finny is the perfect character for this because he is someone who is set up throughout the book to not be in a war. Gene says earlier, "Phineas, you wouldn't be any good in the war, even if nothing had happened to your leg." (Knowles 190). Finny dying in the book wasn't only a sad moment for the boys at Devon but also a sign of whats to come.
ReplyDeleteI think that if Gene and Phineas went to war together, there would still be a war between the two of them. Throughout the novel Gene is constantly jealous and envious of Finny's perfect qualities and traits that make him so special. His often resentment and hatred towards Finny is what pushes the reader to believe that something may happen to Finny. Once Gene jounces the limb, then we know something dark is happening inside Gene's mind. I think is it good that we don't see Finny go to the war. When Gene says, "Only Phineas never hated anyone," (204) it shows how if Phineas went to war, he is too good of a person to harm anyone. It would have been very painful for Gene if Finny would have died on the battlefield because of how innocent Finny is. He never harmed anyone or made any enemies. I disagree that Finny is a role model because to Gene he was more of competition. Gene was always competing to be better than Finny, and when he jounced the limb on that tree, it was a way of evening the playing field for him. So, I agree that this was a logical climax, but I disagree that Finny was a role model to Gene.
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