Ch. 11 "But by now I no longer needed this vivid false identity; now I was acquiring, I felt, a sense of my own real authority and worth, I had many new experiences and I was growing up." (156)

I chose this quote because it shows how Gene realizes he has changed since he pushed Finny out of the tree. Gene feels he is now becoming his own person instead of being in the shadow of Finny all the time. I think that since Finny, the best athlete in the class, was taken out Gene has tried to fill the role of everyone's best friend and has now developed his personality into a whole new structure than before the accident. I think that this is good because if Finny somehow was able to come back to be his old self, I think Gene has changed himself so much that he would not go back to being in Finny's shadow and take on his own persona.

Why does Gene keep mentioning how the acoustics are so terrible?