Phineas refuses to accept the facts concerning the cause of his accident, but eventually comes to terms with the reality. Phineas’s acceptance of the accident happened too late. Brinker and the trial force him to face the facts of the accident and Gene’s role in it. After confessing to Gene that he has been trying to be enlisted, he tries to reassure himself that Gene did not have ill intentions in jouncing the limb. He does this by asking him if “it was just some kind of blind impulse [he] had in the tree, [and he] didn’t know what [he was] doing” (183). Phineas finally accepts Gene’s role in the accident, but still refuses to believe that it is intentional. He faces the facts, but he is still trying to convince himself that what Gene did
