Essay Database

Leper is portrayed as the dreamer and eccentric loner at Devon, his idiosyncratic ways often being cause for ridicule. Unlike the other boys who accept, and sometimes even embrace the war, Leper grapples with it silently. Finally he shocks his classmates and becomes the first to enlist in the war, unable to stand the wait for what he views as the inevitable, stating “’. . . Everything has to evolve or else it perishes’” (117). Leper’s absence makes …

…is evident that Gene adores Finny, but in his smallness of self, he had mistaken this love for competition and resentment. By the end of the novel, Gene’s mixed feelings of awe and contempt are changed into utter devotion, almost worship, as he begins to observe Finny as a branch of himself, finally saying, “I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case” (186).