Because Phineas becomes upset as Brinker cross-examines
Leper about the night in which Gene and Finny are in the tree, he gets up and declares,
"I don't care...." Gene rushes to him, but Phineas looks at Gene, his face a mask: "I
just don't care. Never mind." Still, Brinker insists that all the facts be known.
This insistence "shocked Phineas into an awarenessness' that upsets him terribly and he
rushes out. Gene narrates that the excellent acoustics
recorded
these
separate sounds collided into the general tumult of his body falling clumsily down the
white marble stairs.
While
everyone acts with composure, Gene stays out of the way
because Phineas might curse him: "he might lose his head completely, he
would certainly be worse off for it. " With Finny being wrapped tightly in the
blanket, Gene "stood on the lower edge." Behind him is the
now-empty foyer. As a chair is brought in for Finny,to Gene he seems a "stricken
pontiff," and Gene has the "desolating sense of having all along ignored what was finest
in him." But, instead of carrying the chair, consoling him by whispering in his ear as
Phineas thought of Gene as an extension of himself, Gene walks alone
with Finny's suitcase to the
infirmary.
After the ambulance takes Phineas away, Gene is
told by Mr. Ludsburry to go to the dormitory. Once away, he stands under the room where
Finny is with Dr. Latham. As he hears their voices, Gene becomes erratic in his
thinking; somehow the situation strikes him as so funny that he has to bite his hand to
prevent his laughter from being heard. Finally, Dr. Stappleton leaves and Gene climbs
in the window, but Finny struggles "to unleash his hate against"
Gene:
"You
want to break something else in me!" Finny shouts at
him.
Gene declares his
regret, but has enough control to let Phineas struggle back into the bed, and
just slide down from the window. On this night, Gene has some rather odd sensations:
For instance, he senses meaning in the old trees, trees that possess a message both in
the ones who are present from the beginning as well as the newest sprouts. Gene feels
that Phineas is in the infirmary while he responsible; Gene feels "alone in a dream"
that has occurred once before.
I felt that i was not, never had been and never
would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply menaingful world around
me.
Now, Gene feels
responsible for Phineas's being in the infirmary, and he senses that the "air around us
was filled with much worse things." There is an alienation to Gene
Forrester.
No comments:
Post a Comment