Chapter 13

Recap

• The war effort moves into Devon, with jeeps full of soldiers and sewing machines.
• Brinker’s father visits and the narrator and Brinker talk to him in the Butt Room about war.
• The narrator cleans out his belongings and prepares to head into the real world and the war.

Setting: School as Fortress

It is in the Far Common that the war actually, physically begins to move into Devon, finally consuming the school. Recall the first chapter and the metaphor of the school as a fortress. The narrator compares the movement of the jeeps to the “comical and poignant way … of adolescents.” (188)

War.

Cyclical Nature of War

• Mr. Hadley’s version of war memories suggests that, like schooling, going to war is also a rite of passage.
• Brinker says of his father: “He and his crowd are responsible” for the war. Compare this to Finny’s version that the war is only a ruse made up by a group of “fat, old men.”

Gene's Realization

Gene has a realization of how wars are made: “by something ignorant in the human heart.”

Implication?

Gene is saved (by Finny) from this endless cycle of war caused by the the Jungian Shadow: “I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there.”

Who, or rather, what was his enemy?

Full Circle - The End.

“All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way - if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy.”

Maginot Line

Enemy?

Only Finny was free from the enemy. He is, then, a model, example, teacher, liberator, savior?

End at the Beginning

“The tree was not only stripped by the cold season, it seemed weary from age, enfeebled, dry. I was thankful, very thankful that I had seen it. So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all - plus c’est la meme chose, plus ca change. Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence.
Changed, I headed back through the mud. I was drenched; anybody could see it was time to come in out of the rain.”

The narrator comes full circle. He is destined to continue through the “mud” of life. Yet, he is released from the guilt, shame, and heartbreak through the telling of his narrative and time. It is “time to come in out of the rain.”
“Nothing endures…” He is released.