A Separate Peace: A Brief Analysis Of Gene And Phineas

| Gene strives to be either better or equal to Finny. He has the smarts, and Phineas has the athletics. Again, he is not being a good friend by comparing themselves with each other.

With each scenario, it is shown that most of the time Gene’s enemies are only in his head- not many are in a battle to reign supreme as he is. The war put together with these power struggles allows for such a well done piece, for the reader learns that even in times where others are in battle one does not have to be anchored against someone. Phineas and Gene’s relationship is also instrumental in delivering this message because the reader can witness Phineas, with his free and peaceful ways and realize that Gene does not have to be on the defense and seek power all of the time. Phineas is a unique contrast to Gene that helps Knowles prove his point. Just as in the book, life shows us that this urge to beat an “enemy” is unnecessary and can often have consequences like the ones Gene experienced. It is crucial to recognize the reigning powers in life and not let them take over and cause one to find evil in everyone- Knowles displays this perfectly with Gene and his

Competition and rivalry have the ability to make people shine and accomplish things they never thought possible, and the ability to bring a person’s dark side and get them to do terrible things. Phineas and Gene’s friendship is viewed very differently by each of them. Where Phineas sees Gene as his best friend Gene sees Phineas as a competitor. Gene sees him as someone trying to keep him from being successful in school. This warped view of their relationship is the cause of many of the eventual problems of the novel and arguably the death of Phineas.

After the realization of the person he truly is Gene confronts with his problems, faces reality, and deals with the future. He learns a lot about life and relationships when he finds about his true self. He learns that he must truly express his feelings and communicate instead of keeping all the feelings inside as he had always done with Phineas. Also he learns to listen to himself not others around him if he wants a true advice. After a while, he faced reality and acknowledged the fact that he was not as great was Phineas but they were two different individuals and they were unique in different ways. Gene accepted the guilt for Phineas’ difficulties after his accident and decided he must he must help him as a punishment and act of repentance for what his deed. He does this by giving part of himself to Phineas as we see with the case of the sports

I think the main struggles he faces throughout the novel are jealously and internal guilt. Throughout the book, Gene struggles with his envy towards his best friend Finny. Even after Phineas breaks his leg, Gene is jealous of the way Finny still manages to have motivation and how Finny pretends that nothing even happened. Although Gene feels resentment for the duration of the novel, after causing Finny’s fall off the tree, he starts to feel major guilt inside of him. Even though Finny does not know that Gene jounced the tree for most of the book, I think that made Gene feel even more guilty. In the end, Gene ends up not only losing his struggle, but also losing his best friend. Gene realizes that all along, he thought Finny was the enemy, but if he had acted like Finny, like he always compared himself to be, he would have realized that the antagonists are maybe not always the enemy after all. So after Finny passed, Gene never killed anyone during World War II, and never saw anyone as an enemy, just as Finny would have

John Knowles implies Phineas is naive through the implementation of dialogue. Phineas confesses to Gene that “[he] hope[s] [Gene is] having a pretty good time here… you can’t come by yourself, and at this teenage-period in life the proper person is your best pal” (48). The boys live in a masculine society, which places an emphasis on strength. To expose one’s feelings to someone else is considered “social suicide.” Therefore, Gene takes advantage of Phineas’ naiveté by not responding to his declaration of friendship. Phineas also asserts that “when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love” (111). Phineas’ philosophy centers around a world of youth of peace; he always attempts to find the best in everyone. This naive attitude contrasts with the cruel nature of the world, where wars and competitions are common occurrences. At Gene’s trial for Phineas’ fall, Phineas asks Gene if “[he] was down at the bottom” (170) in a concerned, friendly tone. Phineas fears of Gene’s betrayal; he cannot believe that his friend would have the urge to push him out the tree. In order to protect his high opinion of Gene, he alters the past in his mind to avoid facing the truth. This emphasizes his naiveté as the true events do not align with what Phineas made up in his mind. At the hospital after Phineas’s second fall, following the trial, Gene explains to Phineas that he would "get things so scrambled up nobody would know who to fight any more” and that “[he would] make a mess, a terrible mess...out of the war'" (191). Phineas’ world does not hold any fights or enmity. His good character is unrealistic in this world. Consequently, the war would drive him to madness.

First of all, Gene Forrester is the narrator and one of the main characters in the novel. One of Gene’s best friends is Phineas, another main character in the novel, and an important one as well. Gene and Phineas’s relationship has its ups and downs. One of the downs being, Gene's feeling of jealousy towards Phineas. Phineas is an athletic champion and a charmer, someone everyone adores. These same qualities of Phineas make academic and studious Gene envious. The envy drives Gene to try to be a better student than Phineas, thinking that would make them equal. He thought that if he could be the smartest person in the class, then it would be equal to Phineas’s athletic stardom. What he did not know was it would change him as a person and his

Gene’s identity was resolved in the end. At the conclusion of the book, Gene’s older, more mature and Phineas is no longer in his life. He silences most of his pessimistic thoughts and he’s able to find himself, even though his past still looms in the back of his mind. It’s easy to get lost in who you are when life is throwing everything at you, but when it come to identity, the strain only gets

The author’s use of parallel character’s aids the reader to comprehend the deeper meaning and realize the character’s maturation throughout the text. Knowles uses The Bible to allow for the reader to better understand the relationship of the characters. Gene often talks of how he “lost a part of himself to [Finny]” (Knowles 85) similarly to how Eve was “made from the rib [God] had taken out of man” (Genesis 2:22). This presents the reader with the realization that Eve and Gene are akin. People are also able to understand this when Finny dies because Gene “[felt] that [it] was [his] own funeral” (Knowles 194) and suffered just as much. In Genesis Adam and Eve’s “eyes… were opened” (Genesis 3:7) when Eve ate the fruit enabling both of them feel the impact of Eve’s actions. This is also the case in A Separate Peace, both Gene and Finny mature because of Phineas’s fall. Finny “looked older than [Gene] had ever seen him” (Knowles 70) and the reader is able to feel how “peace had deserted” (Knowles 73) Gene. Also, all of the character’s fates are determined by greed of either Eve or Gene, causing their maturation to occur. Over the course of the book Knowles continuously allows one to see how Gene and Phineas are made for each other, allowing them to learn and grow together, just like Adam and

Phineas was an outgoing and calm boy in the story; he was the perfect example of what peace looks like for boys. Before Gene and Finny jump out of the tree, Finny says to Gene, “

We can see that Gene grows and changes in the novel through his thoughts. Before Gene looks back to his years at Devon, he returns to the school fifteen years later and visits the tree. “Any one of them might have been the one I was looking for. Unbelievable that there were other trees which looked like it here.” (Knowles5). This shows that Gene’s perspective has changed because what was once “tremendous, an irate, steely black steeple beside the river,” (Knowles6), is now just a tree that blends in with the rest of them. Towards the end of the novel, Gene attends Finny’s funeral. “I could not escape the feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.” (Knowles186). Gene thinks this because Finny being gone is also Gene

Since Gene expresses such excitement at Phineas getting in trouble,you can tell that Gene has been waiting for that moment for a long time. Another example of Gene being jealous of Phineas, is that Gene starts to compare the two of them. While studying for a test, Gene shows this comparison by saying, “But while Phineas was a very poor student, I was a pretty good athlete, and when everything was thrown into the scales they would in the end tilt definitely towards me. ”(94). This quote makes the comparison between Gene and Phineas that while Phineas is the better athlete, Gene is both a good athlete and the better student.

The first theme is how the boys had a sense of resentment in their friendship. In some ways they did have an amicable relationship, but not all the time. In chapter 4, Gene is studying for an exam he has the next morning, and Phineas convinces him to go to the beach with him. The boys break school rules by spending the night at the beach, which causes Gene to fail his exam. Gene thinks to himself, “You are both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone…

Throughout life, there is always a person who one strives to beat, be better than or rise above. Little does each of them know that in the end the two actually make each other stronger. In John Knowles' novel, A Separate Peace (1959), he addresses just this. The novel, told from Gene Forrester's point of view, is based on a friendship and rivalry between him and his friend, Finny, during World War II. The two sixteen year olds attend Devon School, a private all boys' school, in New Hampshire. Finny, a very athletically talented youngster, continually but unintentionally causes Gene to feel inferior and insignificant, producing inevitable anger and jealousy inside Gene. During their

Another time Gene experiences identity change, is after Phineas’s fall from the tree. One evening, after Phineas’ fall, Gene decides to wear his clothes. Gene expresses, “I was Phineas, Phineas to the life. I even had his humorous expression in my face, his sharp, optimistic awareness. I had no idea why this gave me such intense relief, but it seemed, standing there in Finny’s triumphant shirt, that