Gene's Inner Enemy

“…we are uncharitable to ourselves; every man is his (own) greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner.” Sir Thomas Brown in Religion Medici. To me this analogue reminds me of how teenage girls and boys act. Hormonal, confused adolescents are mean to each other to gain popularity, however they are being mean to themselves by acting as someone they are not and losing their true friends. In other words, people’s inner enemy and hatred is hurting the people around them, which is losing the innocence and good inside someone. One’s inner enemy is caused by their sins and jealousy for another’s possessions and personality. Having jealousy for another person destroys the true love and friendship for the so-called enemy. The inner enemy

blinds them from seeing the person as someone on their side and as a friend. The eyes of a person cannot detect the enemy, but it is the heart. Once the sins, jealousy, and hatred destroy one’s heart and innocence, the inner enemy will see everyone against them. This inner enemy not only destroys one’s friendships and friends per say, but it will destroy one’s optimism.
Gene is caught up in all the problems his inner enemy causes as if he were eaten alive by all his sins.

The first time his inner enemy is shown in the novel, is when Gene believes that Finny is out to make him fail; “Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies” (53). Phineas persuades Gene to go surfing at the beach, play blitzball, and attend the summer session meetings to loosen him up and have fun, not to make him fail. Gene cannot realize that Finny is doing this for Gene’s benefit, because his inner enemy distorts friendship from evil and fear. Gene’s inner enemy causes a key turning point in this novel, Finny’s fall. Gene’s enemy takes over his mind and jounces the branch to hurt the “enemy,” Phineas. Though Finny is the one physically falling, Gene is metaphorically falling into a hole filled with all his sins, because his inner enemy, too, pushed him. This causes Gene to feel like a worthless ant for the rest of the novel. Many of the students at Devon have an inner enemy that makes them feel like an ant. Quackenbush is mean to anyone he thinks is inferior to him. Brinker resents his enemies. On the other hand, Leper faces his enemy, but then gives up. These students believe that their real enemy is literally the Germans, but truly it is themselves putting up walls and making them feel like miniscule ants. All except Phineas. Phineas is the only one towhich the quote doesn’t apply because he never, “constructed at infinite cost to

themselves”(204). Phineas has no sins, no enemies. Finny is carefree, innocent, and optimistic, because he does not have sins on his back to weigh him down to feel like an ant. After burring his old, nerdy self, jealousy, and his other half, Finny, he is nothing left but a worthless ant.