The Finish Line

The Finish Line frames its protagonist, Tobias King, through the literary lens of the romantic anti-hero, a tradition notably shaped by the works of 19th-century American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The novel’s prologue is prefaced by an epigraph from Poe: “I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched” (9). This quote establishes Tobias’s central conflict, linking his capacity for love directly to his fear of mental illness. The romantic anti-hero, which emerged from the Romantic movement in the 19th century with figures like Lord Byron’s Childe Harold, is typically an intelligent, brooding, and emotionally tormented individual who rebels against societal norms and is often haunted by a dark past. Tobias embodies these traits, describing himself as plagued by the fear of inheriting his father’s schizophrenia and driven by a life of plotting and vengeance. His first-person narration reflects the psychological intensity found in Poe’s work, where protagonists are often consumed by obsessive love, guilt, and paranoia. For example, Poe’s narrators in poems like “The Raven” and stories like “Ligeia” are driven to mental illness by their devotion to a woman. Similarly, Tobias views Cecelia as a cosmic force and his “sole purpose” (4), demonstrating an obsessive love that blurs the line between devotion and madness. By invoking Poe, the novel positions Tobias within a literary tradition of tormented protagonists whose internal struggles are as compelling as their external conflicts.