Krishna
The narrator Gene goes to Devon – first the park and then his old school, after 15 years. The fear of the past memories is still there. He goes and visits the playground and ‘that particular tree’. He remembers the past, when he was a student there.
Phineas (Finny), the athletic boy dares his friends to jump from a tree into a lake. Only seniors, boys a couple of years older than them, dare do this. Only the narrator does and becomes the only one in the lead of the pack with Finny the fearless. They play fight each other and miss dinner. Mr Prud’homme comes to find out why. He is impressed in spite of himself with Finny’s rambling audacity.
Likewise, Finny wears a badge to a party to celebrate the bombing of Central Europe.
He makes the narrator miss his preparation and flunk trigonometry. He breaks the school record in secret without even seeming to try hard and refuses to make it official by repeating it.
Suddenly the narrator realizes that Finny is jealous of him. He is an ace student and Finny is an ace athlete and he does not want anyone surpassing him’ which would happen if the narrator, who is also reasonably good in sports, gets to the top of the school. Having realized, he increases his focus on studies to thwart Finny’s plans to bring him down.
Then, confusingly, he realizes that he has misjudged Finny after all. When Finny has an accident and breaks his leg, Gene feels it is all his fault. He did not catch him when he reached out, thinking that he was trying to pull him down. He goes on vacation and on the way back to school, drops in on Finny who is still in bed, and will never be able to play sports again. He confesses that he really jingled the branch to make him fall, devastating Finny. He then leaves for University and waits for Finny to arrive.
Finny finally arrives. He now wants to make Gene star athlete. And he has weird notions that the war (WW II) is not real and is a conspiracy put on by the powers that be with the collusion of everyone.
When calm Lenny goes to enlist, the school is shocked. In typical Finny fashion, he arranges an illegal winter carnival, complete with smuggled prizes to be awarded. He meets Leper and finds that in his home he is deranged and had deserted the army to boot.
A mock trial organized as a surprise by Brinker exposes finally Gene’s treachery to an unbelieving Finny. Near the end, Finny walks out in disgust, falls and breaks his leg again. Really moving scenes there.
The struggle of Finny regarding Gene and Gene’s genuine realization of what faith Finny had on Gene and how he felt betrayed are really moving.
Now, the only issue I have is how Gene and Brinker get along as if nothing has happened. The ending is interesting.
6/10
– – Krishna (Feb 2019)