The setting needed to take place in Devon, it also needed to occur during the war. The boys are being prepared for this war and to be enlisted into it. Without the war there would be no point to train them or prepare them for this, they would have no reason for these lessons, they could be taught like any other school and any other class. It needed to take place at Devon because of the structure of the school that the author describes. The tree above the river and the war prep at the school are important to the plot of the story. He revisits this place and holds guilt within him because of what he did to Finny there. I will never truly get over what happened to Phineas, although it was finally equal between us I lost my best friend. I hold a guilt inside of me that slowly gets worse. I shook the branch and made it fall, I myself cannot truly tell whether or not I meant to shake that branch but I do regret it. I was in a competition with Finny in my own mind, but that was no reason to ruin him. I was always trying to beat him and that caused such a rage inside me that will never compare to anything because I wanted nothing more than to be him. He was almost perfect in every way and I was not, that never sat well with me. Things changed once he fell, he was dependent on me, and he needed me. It was so …show more content…
Over his time at Devon he gave up on his nature loving self and gave into the inevitable, going to war. He enlisted before anyone else at the school because he knew that he would have to anyway. He took the jump off the tree and entered the war, a cold dark war. He soon deserted from the war and came home, the war had changed him, and he was hallucinating and going crazy. He would see men turn to women. He was sick, the war and what he had seen there had gotten to him, messed with his mind. He no longer wanted to be in the beautiful world, all he saw was a war going on when he sees