pride

I suppose this has everything to do with his best friend Finny. There is a fine line between pride and inadequacy. Finny is everything. Gene describes Finny in epic terms; Finny is like a Greek God. Gene both loves and resents him. Gene is riddled with insecurities while Finny, seemingly, has none. Does this hurt Gene's pride? Gene is an academic perfectionist and feels like he has lost everything when Finny beats him on a test. Gene lived out his identity, pride and all, through finny which makes Finny's eventual "accident" problematic to say the least.