Thesis: By taking a deeper look into the way Gene describes Finny, the actions he took after Finny’s accident, and Gene’s new life after Finny’s death, it is apparent that the death of his best friend was Gene’s personal resolution to his inner war with jealousy.
Reason 1: the way Gene describes Finny
Example: ‘It was hypnotism. I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn’t help envying him that a little, which was perfectly normal. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little.’ (Knowles 25)
Example: ‘We began to meet every night to initiate them. The Charter Members, he and I, had to open every meeting by jumping ourselves. This was the first of many rules which Finny created without notice during the summer. I hated it. I never got inured to the jumping. At every meeting the limb seemed higher, thinner, the deeper water harder to reach. Every time, when I got myself into position to jump, I felt a flash of disbelief that I was doing anything so perilous. But I always jumped. Otherwise I would have lost face with Phineas, and that would have been unthinkable.’ (Knowles 34)
Reason 2: the actions Gene took after Finny’s accident
Example: ‘One evening when I was dressing for dinner in this numbed frame of mind, an idea occurred to me, the first with any energy behind it since Finny fell from the tree. I decided to put on his clothes. We wore the same size, and although he always criticized mine he used to wear them frequently, quickly forgetting what had belonged to him and what to me. I never forgot, and that evening I put on his cordovan shoes, his pants, and I looked for and finally found his pink shirt, neatly laundered in a drawer. [...]
But when I looked in the mirror it was no remote aristocrat I had become, no character out of daydreams. I was Phineas, Phineas to the life. I even had his humorous expression in my face, his sharp, optimistic awareness. I had no idea why this gave me such intense relief, but it seemed, standing there in Finny’s triumphant shirt, that I would never stumble through the confusion of my own character again.’ [Ellipsis mine] (Knowles 62)
Example: ‘We drew back in amazement from this. In the silence all the flighty spirits of the morning ended between us. He sat down and turned his flushed face away from me. I sat next to him without moving for as long as my beating nerves would permit, and then I stood up and walked slowly toward anything which presented itself. It turned out to be the exercise bar. I sprang up, grabbed it, and then, in a fumbling and perhaps grotesque offering to Phineas, I chinned myself. [...] “Do thirty of them,” he mumbled in a bored voice. I had never done ten of them.’ [Ellipsis mine] (Knowles 116)
Reason 3: Gene’s new life after Finny’s death
Example: ‘“What’s that?” Brinker said from behind me, pointing across my shoulder at some open trucks bringing up the rear. “What’s in those trucks?”
“They look like sewing machines.”
“They are sewing machines!”
“I guess a Parachute Riggers’ school has to have sewing machines.”
“If only Leper had enlisted in the Army Air Force and been assigned to Parachute Riggers’ school…”
“I don’t think it would have made any difference,” I said. “Let’s not talk about Leper.”
“Leper’ll be all right. There’s nothing like a discharge. Two years after the war’s over people will think a Section Eight means a berth on a Pullman car.”
“Right. Now you do you mind? Why talk about something you can’t do anything about?”
“Right.”’ (Knowles 169-197)
Example: ‘I was ready for the war, now that I no longer had any hatred to contribute to it. My fury was gone, I felt it gone, dried up at the source, withered and lifeless. Phineas had absorbed it and taken it with him, and I was rid of it forever.’ (Knowles 203)
