chapter 8 text

As I was thinking more about the war I came to the conclusion that I am not going to enlist. I could not bare the fact that i would have to leave Finny in the middle of the condition he was in. We had to start training for the Olympics if I was going to help him like I said I would. In the beginning of the day Finny was joking around with me when I was shoveling snow on the railroad. "You don't have to advertise like that, we all know you're the worst dressed man in the class" (95). Brinker Hadley had been given a nickname that meant asian danger, and also showed fear. The fear was that the Japanese would take over the West. The nickname that he was given was the "Yellow Peril". "Yellow Peril" Hadley swept through the school with the speed of a flu epidemic, and it must be said to his credit that Brinker took it well enough except when, in its inevitable abbreviaton, people sometimes called him "Yellow" instead of "Peril" (101). As the days went on the thought of war kept streaming in and out of my head. "So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as it bores on us, overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable" (101). To me the war was like the ocean, as like waves crashed over people in the war were risking their lives day by day.