In chapter twelve, an unused section of land from Devon is donated to the war. As said in the book, " It wasn't the essence of Devon, and so it was donated, without too serious wench, to the war." This is significant in many ways. Throughout the book, one of the major events/ themes was the war, and a conflict was that is was slowly but surely creeping into the every day life of Devon. At the beginning of the novel, in the summer session life was fun, chill, and completely war free, but as the summer session ended we started to see how the war was effecting the community of Devon. This was farther shown when the students want to enlist, when some teachers leave for the war and mostly when Leper becomes transformed by the war. But throughout all of this, the war is still separate and has not fully penetrated Devon. But now it literally has penetrated Devon every second of every day and the sight of it isn't possible to escape, due to the fact that a war camp is literally next to the school.
Something else significant about Devon being invaded by the war is that throughout the novel it was shown that the community of Devon could only find an escape from the war at Devon. At the winter carnival it was as if the war didn't exist, or in the daily conversations and just fun and games of the kids they always had moments of escape from the reality that was not shown to them at Devon. But now that the war is at Devon, there is no escape from it, and everything about the school experienced by Gene and his friends will seize to exist. "As i crossed the Far Common I saw that it was rapidly becoming unrecognizable" (this quote is then followed by a long list of things that make it different), this shows that Devon is different and will not be how Finny new it.
One question I thought of was, do you think that the war taking over Devon was one of the main reasons Gene enlisted?
I think the main reason Gene enlisted was because there was no longer somebody holding him back. Throughout the winter at Devon, Finny had been telling Gene that the war was imaginary, and that it was just a ruse being put on by some old fat men. Once Leper was driven crazy and Finny died, however, there was nothing to stop him from enlisting. I think that if Finny hadn't come clean about his true intentions about enlisting right before death, Gene may have held off enlisting as a tribute to Finny. However, when Gene discovered that the only person telling him not to go to war was saying so because he himself wanted to go to war, he saw the irony and utter ludicrousness of the situation and thought he might as well go to war and make up for the time that he had already missed.
ReplyDeleteDo you guys think that if Finny hadn't told Gene why he had said the war was imaginary, Gene would still go to war after he'd graduated? Why or why not?