Finny’s coaching Gene more for his own sake than for his
friend’s would not be entirely out of character. As the novel makes
clear, Finny has always been self-absorbed, and his injury only
cements this aspect of him. This self-absorption manifests itself
in his insistence that the war is a hoax created by fat, rich, old
men. Finny’s motivations in making this claim are all too apparent:
everyone at Devon lives under the shadow of imminent military service,
knowing that soon they will be called upon to go off to war—everyone except
for the crippled Finny. His injury has placed him in a “separate
peace,” one that he doesn’t consider a blessing; rather, he feels that
it isolates and alienates him, excluding him from the common experiences
of his classmates and the entire world. Finny cannot accept being
left out: if the war cannot be a part of his life, then he cannot
let it exist for anyone at all. When Mr. Ludsbury challenges this
illusion by insisting that everyone must train for war, Finny’s famous
charm vanishes and he responds rudely. His curt contradiction of
Ludsbury’s statement constitutes one of the few moments in the book
when Finny deliberately offends or acts coldly toward another person.
His habitual friendliness, it seems, does not extend to those who
challenge his self-preserving illusions.
The scene outside Mr. Ludsbury’s residence is also important
for the parallel that it sets up between athletics and war. Earlier,
Gene compares various athletic events to battlefield combat, describing tennis
balls as bullets and football players as foot soldiers. For Finny,
however, the conceptual implications of these comparisons make no
sense. In his world, athletics are ultimately anticompetitive and
embody pure achievement, unconnected to either definitive victory
or conclusive defeat. The rules that he devises for blitzball illustrate
his notions about what sports are and should be: not one team pitted
against another but sheer physical challenge, embarked on together.
Knowles’s novel suggests that Finny is singular in his attitude:
as becomes apparent by the end, everyone else in the novel is a creature
of war, living their lives in constant battle against whatever enemies
they have engendered for themselves. These other characters extend
their warrior mindsets to sports as well. Finny alone refuses to
connect athletics and war because he doesn’t understand the concept
of an enemy.
