4.) What is guilt? Do we all have it? Is it part of being human? Can someone live guilt free?
Guilt is an emotion that humans feel when they feel bad about something they did or did not do. I do not think that it is possible to live guilt free, since everyone does things that they regret. However, different people feel guilty about different things. For example, at first Gene doesn’t seem to be very guilty about pushing Finny out of the tree, but instead does everything he can to block it out, pretendingq it never happened. 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). However, I think that this is another instance of Gene lying to himself, trying to get himself to no longer care. Guilt is the main emotion that keeps people from forgetting an experience where they did something wrong. He also lies to Finny and tries to manipulate his half-remembered version of the truth, even though Finny has a ‘feeling’ about what really happened in the tree. It was only after Finny apologized for suspecting Gene that the guilt really hits him, and he thinks "And I thought we were competitors! It was so ludicrous I wanted to cry. If Phineas had been sitting here in this pool of guilt, how would he have felt, what would he have done?” (Knowles 66). Gene then tries to assuage his guilt by telling Finny what really happened, but he ends up only hurting him more. By telling Finny, Gene did nothing to help either of them, since Finny now believes that his ‘best friend’ tried to kill him, and Gene knows that all he did was selfishly try to get rid of the burden of guilt by dumping it on Finny, thereby hurting him. Sometimes it’s better to keep a secret if you know that it could damage a relationship or hurt a person. Just because you feel like it would make you feel better doesn’t mean you should go ahead and do it. Life is full of mistakes and nobody’s perfect, so it is humanly impossible to live guilt free.
Guilt is the average human reaction to any misdeed therefore all people experience it at some point in their life. Gene, in order to make amends with Finny after jouncing the branch of the tree thus causing him to fall off and injure himself badly, attempts to tell Finny of his wrongdoing, however Finny refuses to believe him. In earlier class discussions, we pondered whether it is possible to lie to oneself successfully and debated the difficulty to accept the truth after lies. In this case, Finny lied to himself saying, "I did have this idea, this feeling that when you were standing there beside me, y- I don't know, I had a kind of feeling. But you can't say anything for sure from just feelings... So I just have to forget it" (Knowles 66). When Gene tells him at the end of the chapter that he caused the accident, Finny refuses to believe him, as he has convinced himself that what he thought was merely a feeling and that his best pal could never do such an awful thing. Is it possible to convince one’s self that another's wrongdoing never happened, therefore changing their own account of the event?
ReplyDeleteGuilt is an emotion that is part of being a human being; it is natural to have bad feelings about something you wished you didn't do or say. During the beginning of chapter 5 Gene did not feel guilty, he mostly only wanted to hide from people so he would not be accused of doing something horrible he did. I agree with Ayame that only after he visited Finny and Finny apologized for thinking that Gene would do such a thing, that was when Gene felt guilty. He thinks about how selfish he was and as he sat in a pool of guilt he wondered how Finny would have reacted " I wanted to cry. If Phineas had been sitting here in this pool of guilt, how would he have felt, what would he have done?” (Knowles 66). But i feel like even before he visited Finny he felt guilty "I burst out crying into my hands; I cried for Phineas and for myself and for this doctor who believed in facing things" (Knowles 64). He said this as he walked over to the infirmary. Mostly I agree with Ayame but i actually think that what Gene did at the end of the chapter was the right thing to do. If Gene hadn't told Finny he would be keeping a secret from Finny for the rest of his life, and he would always feel guilty about it. It's easier if he lets it all out and just tells Finny the truth because now they can work things out without keeping any more secrets from each other. A friend should never keep a secret from a true friend and Gene showed that deep down, past his jealousy for Finny and his selfishness, he is Finny's true friend.
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