Our last and final book of the summer was a great piece to end on and not to mention one of my favorites. The introduction of the story was a remarkable approach to get you hooked right away. It makes you question what happened at the Devon School to make this unknown guy seek the grounds of the school for memories of his youth. Then you are brought back to 1942, the year of the first Summer Session at the Devon School, you are introduced to Phineas. This character, in my opinion, makes this whole story. Finny, as the boys called him, is a very strong worded, rule braking, athletic, wise and ambitious teenage boy. That dream shattering fall during a gathering of the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session should have ended Finny's hope of excelling. However, that accident just fueled his determination to make something great. That something was Gene.
"But they couldn't use that trick forever, so for us in the forties they've cooked up this war fake." That quote from the text made the character of Finny become so much clearer to me. His mind set of everything had an alterior motive. Although, this was not a deceiving trait, it was an honorable one. The day Finny beat the "100 Yards Free Style" swimming record he didn't want it publicize it, he just wanted to see if he could beat it. When he and Gene went to the beach, he just wanted to swim; it gave him a sense of freedom, something that was the opposite from the Devon School. The most apparent example would be after the fall which made him incapable of sports; he put his knowledge, dedication and drive for Gene becoming successful.
The way John Knowles told his story was a great feature to whole understanding of the book. This was not a difficult book to follow but finding the deeper meaning took effort. If you just saw Gene and Finny as best friends at a boarding school, then I believe you did not receive a full and proper understanding of such an amazing book. You had to place yourself in the setting, make yourself be in Finny’s pink woven broadcloth shirt, to understand Finny's mannerisms and to finish the book with a compression as I did.
I also agree with how Finny made this book. When Finny said the quote about how war was not real, I believe he was trying to do himself and everybody else a favor of not believing in the war. He was trying to forget the dying and all the injuries that come with war. He had made a perfect world in his mind. Everyone was worried and stressed out about the war, while Finny was calm and did not give a care in the world about it. He made the best out of the worst possible situation. No one else thought the way he did, and this is why I believed he died because his thinking was not right for his time. War time.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a great book, and I agree that it definitely had a deeper meaning if you looked hard enough. The writing style was excellent, it really added to the experience and understanding of the story and its meaning. I agree with Jared, Phineas's death, however tragic, was probably best, maybe even necessary. He was definitely out of place in his optimistic outlook on life, yet with a broken leg during war time, there really wasn't much for him to do. But he really did live on through Gene, in one form or another. Nice post, you have a lot of insight here.
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