How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Any fear I had ever had of the tree was nothing beside this. It wasn't my neck, but my understanding which was menaced. He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he (4.72).
This is what Gene fears, more than Finny's athleticism or charm – his goodness of heart, his pureness of motive. The question is, then, why is Gene free of fear after Finny falls from the tree? His athleticism has been destroyed, but his character hasn't. What should we make of this?
Quote #5
In the silences between jokes about Leper's glories we wondered whether we ourselves would measure up to the humblest minimum standard of the army. I did not know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it; I wondered in the silences between jokes about Leper whether the still hidden parts of myself might contain the Sad Sack, the outcast, or the coward. We were all at our funniest about Leper, and we all secretly hoped that Leper, that incompetent, was as heroic as we said (9.16).
Leper becomes a reflection of all the boys' dreams of their own future selves in the army. What does it say, then, that Leper goes mad and abandons ship?
Quote #6
"That was when things began to change. One day I couldn't make out what was happening to the corporal's face. It kept changing into faces I knew from somewhere else, and then I began to think he looked like me…" (10.77).
Leper's visions betray a fear of changing identity – think about this in the context of what's going on between Finny and Gene, as the latter "become[s] a part of" the former.