Marcus Patalano #2: discuss the irony of the dialogue between Finny and Gene on the second half of page 155.

     Finny gets overconfident that he will not break his bone again, so he ends up tumbling down the stairs at Brinker's trial and injuring himself even more. Finny has always been a very confident and somewhat overconfident kid. Even after his injury he still feels as if he can do almost everything he did before he shattered his leg. While Gene is urging Finny to stay away from dangerous activities such as the snowball fight in the beginning of the chapter, Finny responds with conviction "No, of coarse I wont break it again. Isn't the bone supposed to be stronger when it grows together over a place where it has been broken once?"(Knowles 155). This however is notably ironic. His leg is not very close to being entirely healed, nor will it ever be. Finny starts to be come hubristic and becomes totally unaware that if he falls he could get even more seriously injured, or even die. Gene feels that Finny is being overconfident, however he is not assertive enough to argue with Finny. This ends with serious consequences when Gene hears "these separate sounds collided into the general tumult of his (Finny's) body falling clumsily down the white marble stairs"(Knowles 177).