John Knowles begins the novel with
present day Gene visiting the school he graduated from 15 years ago, Devon. The
story opens up with Gene walking around the school, reflecting on his past
years there. John Knowles begins the
novel this way to foreshadow the other half of the chapter, which is a flash
back of him self attending the school. The first half of the chapter is Gene
revisiting the school and at the very end of that Gene is thinking and looking
at trees. “I began to examine each one closely, and finally identified the tree
I was looking for by means of certain small scares rising along its trunk, and
by a limb extending over the river, and another thinner limb growing near it.”
(Knowles, 14) Right at the start of the second half, it opens up with Gene and
his friends; Finny, Leper, Elwin, Chet and Bobby climbing trees in the forest
near The Devon School jumping off the exact tree into the river. The effect it give us is a taste of the
younger Gene and then the Gene a decade and half later. Just in the first
chapter we can get a little more of a understanding of Gene’s personality,
while in other stories we might not get that. The purpose of John Knowles
starting the novel with present day Gene is to foreshadow the other half of the
chapter.
John Knowles shows Gene's perspective on the Devon school while he was there, and 15 years later. "It had loomed in my memory as a huge lone spike dominating the riverbank..." (Knowles, 13) Knowles shows how the tree had more significance, and seemed to stand out. 15 years later, the tree is still important but doesn't stand out as much as it did that summer. The reader can also see a change in tone, when Gene is talking about Devon in the present, and when he starts to speak about how he felt about it in the past, his tone changes. The author mentions that 15 years before, there had been a war; this foreshadows his relationship with Finny which was much like a war. This chapter sets up the relationship between Gene and Phineas introducing topics like envy and competition, suggesting what will happen later on in the book.
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