What does Gene mean when he says “I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war end before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there” (204). Who/what is his enemy? Why does he contradict himself there? What was his war?

In the quote on page 204, Gene is referring to his inner demons. Gene killed his inner demons at Devon, and one was jealousy. In the beginning of the novel, Gene admires Finny’s suave and carefree attitude.  However as the summer session continued, envy and admiration start to blur for Gene. Gene wishes he could be amazing at something like Finny, but Gene takes this too far. After learning that Finny would “kill himself” if Gene became valedictorian, he takes that too far and is convinced that Finny is trying to steal the spotlight from him. Gene almost gets upset at Finny when he asks if he wants to see Leeper jump out of the tree. One quote that ticks off Gene is when Finny realizes that Gene has to work in order to get A’s. “It seemed that he had made some kind of parallel between my studies and sports… He didn’t know yet that he was unique.” (Knowles 58) This quote is important because it makes Gene even more jealous, because he realizes he has to work in order to succeed, while Finny succeeds in his own way without trying. These feelings of jealousy rise after this comment, and eventually culminates with Finny falling out of the tree.

            Gene contradicts himself because his enemy wasn’t a person; it was jealousy. Devon is an extremely competitive environment and jealousy is always waiting to strike the boys and poison their minds. Gene also never hated jealousy because it controlled him and fogged his mind. However, Gene’s subconscious was always at war with jealousy, because Gene knew that hiding the truth about the incident at the tree was immoral, but his envy refused to let him accept defeat. Gene’s jealousy was destroyed when Finny died, because Gene finally came to the realization that his envy for his friend died with him. Jealousy destroyed Gene’s admiration for Finny and destroyed one of his closest friendships.