Gene is a sociopath, and ruins any friendship he has. He may have a conscience, but it is very weak, and also he is very judgmental. Sociopaths are hostile, have a lack of empathy, and have difficulty with relationships. Gene is very much like this. He is hostile towards everyone, isn’t very empathetic to his best friend, and struggles with his friendship with Finny. He can’t seem to let himself be happy. Gene had it pretty good, but he just kept sabotaging his own happiness. He has a friend that he turns into his enemy. At least in his mind Finny is an enemy. Finny still thinks that him and Gene are best friends, but Gene stopped being friends with him a long time ago. Gene has sociopathic tendencies through out the book. Sociopaths have…show more content… Gene definitely has a conscience of some sort, however it is very weak. His guilt seems to be more oriented towards feeling bad about what other people, or Finny will think of him. He feels remorse for the actions he does, “It was just some ignorance inside me, some crazy thing inside me, something blind, that’s all it was”(Knowles 186). Gene is very judgmental and hypocritical. He judges Finny for selfishness. “And I had detected that Finny’s was a den of lonely, selfish ambition” (Knowles 53). He even blames him for being injured. “He’s got to accept it and unless we start acting perfectly natural about it, even kid him about it once in a while, he never will” (Knowles 155). He hurts Finny because he felt threatened by him. He thinks that Finny is trying to ruin his studies, and is trying to make him look bad. Finny is very athletic, and Gene becomes jealous of him so he tries to take him out. It is impossible to tell if Gene wanted him dead or not, but Finny’s injury definitely affected Gene. Finny may not have died right after the injury, but it is worse to Finny because he can’t play sports anymore. Sports were Finny’s life. So Gene ruined Finny’s life because of the injury, and then later Finny will die because of it. Gene killed his friend just because he was jealous. He seems pretty numb to the fact that he killed his friend. Sociopaths also have a lack of emotion like Gene
