Gene's Relationship To Finny

As the story continues, Gene starts feeling anger and jealousy to finny because he thinks finny is better than him. Finny won't admit to the fact that Gene jounced the limb so he would fall. At serious moments in the story, Gene simply describes weird events without showing his thoughts, and emotions. Similarly, Gene’s narration becomes bad at the unusual part when it becomes clear that his feeling will be released. Also, throughout the novel, even as Gene is opening up to the reader, an important part of him makes the person annoyed.

Gene’s character as an unusual narrator creates a problem that goes throughout the novel. Because it is Gene’s perspective through which we see the story, Gene is the character that the reader sees the most.
The reader will pay attaention more to Gene because he has constant problems and envy.

Whether or not we think Gene has purposely caused Finny’s fall, we begin to feel increasingly annoyed from him. Also, even as we become interested in the story, we become angry of its character. Gene is not a perfect kid when it comes to sports or anything that finny does, but he is very intelligent and finny does not have that. Finny doesn't study or prepare for a test. Gene follows the rules but finny doesn't. Instead, finny creates his own.

Gene needs to learn how not to be so uptight and finny needs to learn to not have so much fun and ignore his schoolwork and grades.
These boys have constant wars with themselves. Gene was the kid who started all this drama. Finny is dead now because of what Gene did. Gene cannot live when he knows it was him who killed finny.

Finny is nice enough to forgive Gene for what he did to him. Early on in the novel, Gene’s relationship to Finny seems to be defined by simple envy. Finny is athletic, with a powerful and assertive spirit, Gene feels overshadowed and even controlled by his friend. After Finny’s fall, Gene seems to be purged of his animosity, and he begins to blur the line between himself and his friend. Just before knocking Finny out of the tree, he seems to notice that Finny was never envious of him.

Over the course of the rest of the novel, he tries to escape his own self by losing himself in Finny. The post-accident in which Gene dresses in his friend’s clothes. In allowing Finny to train him to be the athlete that Finny himself can no longer be, Gene seems to be letting Finny live through him. Yet, just as Finny lives through Gene, Gene lives through Finny by letting Finny’s identity take over his own. Also, the two exist in a codependent state, each needing the
other.

The more time goes by and the more the war encroaches upon Devon, the more the boys depend upon each other to maintain this. Also, while this codependency allows the boys to remain content and feel secure, it hampers their entrance into the reality of adulthood. So, too, does it limit their development as people in touch with their own identities. This codependency may be unhealthy, even destructive, as the terrible manner of Finny’s death.