What is guilt? Do we all have it? Is it part of being human? Can someone live guilt free?
Guilt is when you know you did something that wasn’t right. It’s when your conscience won’t leave you alone because you know that you purposefully did something you are fully aware that you shouldn’t have done. Many people attempt to bury guilt, because it is an uncomfortable and upsetting feeling. Every human being has some level of guilt in his or her life. It’s not possible to live entirely guilt-free. Maybe one has less guilt in his or her life, but that could be because they do less guilty things, or because bad things do not bother them as much. For some people, putting a piece of paper in the trash is not a big deal, and for others, they feel bad afterwards. No one can live guilt free, but the amount of guilt depends on the person.
Gene feels an extreme and terrible amount of guilt, after he jounces the tree, causing for Finny to fall and ending his sports career. It follows him for a long time when Finny is in the hospital. He tries to make the feelings go away, but ends up in kind of a funk, specifically when he is on vacation. While back at Devon he says, “I spent as much time as I could alone in our room, trying to empty my mind of every thought, to forget where I was, even who I was,” (Knowles 62). Gene cannot stop thinking about Finny and what he knows he did, and finally has to tell him, saying, “I was thinking about you and the accident because I caused it,” (Knowles 69). Experiencing guilt is a part of being human, and it can be rough and awful, or just a nagging feeling at the back of your head, but guilt is what helps humans to learn from their mistakes. When one learns from this punishment, they hopefully don’t do it again. Guilt is knowing you are in the wrong, it is a part of being human, and it is something Gene experiences a lot of in this reading.
I agree with you more or less completely. Guilt is fully knowing you are wrong and the yearning to right that wrong. It is a trait most humans are born with, and retain throughout their lives. When Gene thinks, "If Phineas had been sitting here in this pool of guilt," (Knowles 66). He describes his emotional situation more or less perfectly.He ends up admiting his guilt to Finny, which turns out to be a bad move. Whether their friendship recovers from this remains to be seen.
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