Literary Analysis #1

1. In the summer of 1942 Gene and Phineas become best friends. Gene is an introverted intellectual while Phineas is a handsome, taunting , daredevil athlete that usually is able to get away with anything because of his charisma. After Phineas breaks a school record; Gene begins to start having hatred towards him because he believes Phineas is trying to sabotage his studies so they won't be "equals". Then Gene realizes that those were never Phineas' true intentions, yet still upset; he jounces the branch they were standing on,  causing Phineas to fall from the tree and brake his leg.Gene begins to feel guilty and later on tells Phineas what he did, but Phineas doesn't believe him so Gene ends up leaving his house. In Devon, Gene is considering to enlist but after Phineas returns he sets aside the idea and starts training for the 1944 Olympic Games. Gene gets a telegram in the Winter Carnival from Leper, so Gene goes and visits him but gets freaked out because Leper is a little nuts and because he knows what happened up in the tree with Phineas. The guy s in Devon want to clear up what happened in the tree so the have a meeting in the middle of the night and Leper ends up insinuating that it was Gene, so Phineas gets upset and leaves but then falls down the stairs and breaks his leg again. Gene ends up going to the infirmary and although they do have a little quarrel they patch things up the nest day, sadly when Gene returns to visit Phineas he finds out that he died, because some bone marrow got into his heart. Gene ends up feeling like a part of him died and ends up enlisting to.
2. Although there was a war going on I feel that the author was trying to say the there isn't always enmity in someones heart.
3.  Overall I feel like the author really admired Phineas' character it brought light into a time period of mainly pure desolation. He was very sincere in his view of the book and gave the reader a new perspective towards the war times, but with reverent. For example:
* “It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart”- I feel like this was something that was not found in a heart like Phineas', because even Gene realizes that Phineas wouldn't be best suited for the army because Phineas would be like a peacemaker and next thing you know there would be a lull in fighting.“Phineas just walked serenely on, or rather flowed on, rolling forward in his white sneakers with such unthinking unity of movement that "walk" didn't describe it.” -  The author is really good at making Phineas distinctive from everyone else, because he has the qualities be a set example of how  we should be. “Phineas created an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations, letting its rocklike facts sift through and be accepted only a little at a time, only as much as he could assimilate without a sense of chaos and loss.” 
4. Symbolism: The tree represented the supposedly first act of courage that students would take when they were going into the war.
Flashback: During most of the book you realize that the author made it seem as the character was reflecting on something painful like something he had lost so he structures it as a reflection so towards the end everything is revealed.
Foreshadowing: Gene's reflections on Devon foreshadow a sad incident, and the way Gene described the tree it just felt as a matter of time before something happened.
Imagery: The author used imagery when describing the way Phineas used to walk to the way he walked after the accident; he portrayed Phineas' walk as something so graceful that it almost seemed as flouting . “Phineas just walked serenely on, or rather flowed on, rolling forward in his white sneakers with such unthinking unity of movement that "walk" didn't describe it.”
Bandwagon: Phineas was very persuasive, charismatic, and popular so he was able to  have everyone following him and even to his sometimes crazy ideas.
 Incongruous: The older Gene would speak during the time of his reflections, for example when he said, “But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved.” 
Metaphor:“I did not stop to think that one wave is inevitably followed by another even larger and more powerful, when the tide is coming in.” 
Chiasmus: “I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.”
Allusion:  “...it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart.” 
Gradation: “Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.” 

Characterization
1. Direct Characterization: " Leper had the kind of fragile fair skin given to high unhealthy coloring. He was all color, painted at random, but none of it highlighted his grief." " Finny , my best friend, and also unique able to get away with anything at all..He got away with everything because of the extraordinary kind of person he was." 
Indirect Characterization: " I said nothing, my mind exploring the new dimensions of isolation around me. Any fear I had of the tree was nothing beside this" - Gene just finds out that Phineas is not jealous of him. “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.” 
The used direct and indirect because he wanted us to figure out some of the people on our own. Gene was really good at being the narrator because we got to know how others were but at the same time we got to know him as well. So we were able to grow along with him.
2. It does change especially when he was talking about himself in the past tense so through syntax it would change every now and then to accommodate the reference to the flashback. For example “But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved. And if it wasn't there, as for example with Phineas, then I put it there myself.”  the author uses past tense and since the narrator is speaking it brings it back to the person who has the reflection. 
3. The protagonist in this case being Gene, is a dynamic round character because he does change a lot internally with the help of Phineas. He begins as a character that is insecure and has the urge to always win, yet by the end even though he might still have some of the same fears is afraid that he is the same  boy he was back then. We do get to know him more throughout the book enough to know his fears.
4. I felt like I met a person, because I to have a best friend and it is normal at least I think so that you sometimes envy or hold someone in higher regard, I don't think I would do something so drastic as to make someone fall from a tree but I wouldn't know either. Sometimes having insecurities about yourself may lead you away from things that you think are much higher than yourself, and by the end you just end up making yourself feel inferior.“I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.”