Finny Quotes

“The point was, the grace of it was, that it had nothing to do with sports. For I wanted no more of sports. They were barred from me, as though when Dr. Stanpole said, "Sports are finished" he had been speaking of me. I didn't trust myself in them, and I didn't trust anyone else. It was as though football players were really bent on crushing the life out of each other, as though boxers were in combat to the death, as though even a tennis ball might turn into a bullet.” (p84) The accident—Finny’s accident, shattered the barrier between the innocence of youth, and the ever-present war that was being waged on their behalf. Death appeared and vanished in an instant, suppressed by the ongoing siege of “the ignorant human heart.” (p193) Wartime
For example, wearing the Devon school tie as a belt—a sign of disrespect towards the school. To Gene’s astonishment, he get’s away with it, even causing the stern Mr. Patch-Withers to laugh. Another example of this characteristic is when he beats the school swimming record, as a non-swimmer, with no practice. This character-defining trait comes to an end, when Finny’s injury begins. When he can’t join the war, he want’s to. He goes as far as writing the army, general, and other countries. When no one will take him, he perpetrates the myth that there is no war, the same way he got out of using the tie as a belt: creating absurd rationalizations, to prove his point. This is the real death of Finny. When he can no longer do something that he can’t
I was thankful, very thankful that I had seen it. So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all—plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change. Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence” (p14) When Gene returns to the Devon school, he alludes to Finny’s accident. In this quote, he is referencing Finny’s death, and how it has changed over time. The ideas associated with it no longer haunted him, instilled fear and him, or had grandeur. It was now “just a group of trees” “This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but that they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way” (p14) This is the tree that Gene associated with Finny, and the accident. When he says “the giants of your childhood,” he is directly referencing Finny; when he says “shrunken by age,” he is directly referring to the accident. In this quote, he is talking about the accident and Finny, how it is no longer an impression of severity and fear, that he suppressed all these years in order to move on with the war. The war was over now (1945) and he could now clearly think about the accident, and how it impacted him. The truth of