Phineas begins to recognize the severity of the war and stops believing that it is fake, which is shown when Gene describes, “He brought his wide-set eyes up, his grin flashed and faded, and then he murmured, ‘Sure. There isn’t any war’ ” (Knowles 158). It appears that Finny is beginning to mature, when he suddenly doubts his theory that the war is fake and does not make comments about Leper being crazy. I infer that his sudden attitude change is due to the fact that he is realizing that he is crippled and cannot go on to do all of things that the other Devon boys can do, like fighting in the war, which causes his vivacious personality to dull a bit. Additionally, it is clear that Finny originally made up this theory of the war in order to
