A Separate Peace Changes

Gene’s act of purposely causing Finny to fall out of the tree forces him to feel guilty and move on from his tendencies of jealousy and anger. After Finny’s fall, Gene discovers that Finny is so faithful as to not even accuse Gene of his actions. This causes Gene to begin to feel extreme guilt, thence

According to the novel, Finny and Gene are best friends. They would both go to places together and share a room at school. As Gene gain his knowledge, he becomes more conscious about his greed and desires for being successful at beating Finny for his athleticism and capability. He also surmised that Finny was keeping him from making good grades by stopping him from accomplishing his academic courses. Gene had came to a realization that he hated Finny and wanted to be better than him. It was all a misunderstanding because Finny never

Gene helping Finny with schoolwork is helpful, but Finny does not show appreciation towards Gene. This shows lack of admiration on Finny’s part. It’s not just Finny showing lack of admiration it’s a combination of both of them not understanding each other. Finny always includes Gene in activities, for example: skiing, hanging out with friends, going to the boardwalk and being part of a club. He never realizes what kind of friend Finny was to be to him. Sadly, they can never get anywhere in there friendship cause they fight about everything. Both characters are separate from each other and can never find common ground. Their intentions start out decent until they actually got to know each other. They both have qualities that each character want’s except they both seem to want what they can’t have. Jealousy is what leads to resentment and lack of

Separate Peace What really happened in the tree? Gene and Finny were very good friends; however, whatever happened in the tree the day the Finny "fell" out, is the actual cause of Gene "…My knees bent and I jounced the limb…" page 52. In fact, Finny did not fall out of the tree, but Gene had actually pushed him out. Gene had very good reasons to push him out "Finny had put him up to it, to finish me fro good on the exam." Page 49. He pushed him out of jealousy for two things. For athleticism, and for his popularity, and also for his ability to talk his way out of anything.. First, Finny was a very athletic person; however, Gene is just a normal average day person. Gene couldn't stand attempting to

Gene pushes Finny out of the tree due to jealousy. This shows just how much jealousy Gene has. He is willing to hurt someone because of one tiny thing after another. All Finny has done so far is be himself. Gene overreacts and seriously injures his “best

In the beginning of the novel, Gene, is a clueless individual. He sees the worst in people and lets his evil side take over not only his mind but also his body. During the tree scene, Gene convinces himself that Finny isn’t his friend, tricking himself into thinking that Finny is a conniving foil that wants to sabotage his academic merit. Gene is furthermore deluded that every time Finny invites Gene somewhere it’s to keep him from studying and

Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affect him in many ways. Gene begins to lose his identity and start conforming to Finny. According to Knowles, “If I was head of the class and won that prize then we would be even…” (27). This quote explains how Gene follows finny by trying to be head of the class with him. Gene gets jealous of Finny being head of the class, so he tells him if he was head they would be even. When Finny introduce jumping off the tree to Gene at first he didn’t want to do it, but he wanted to be like Finny so he did it. In Knowles words, “what was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this? Was he getting some kind of hold over me? (5).

As Gene feels the obligation to lose himself to become Finny, Knowles shows us that a loss of identity may be present in a relationship if there is an unequal amount of power. When Finny tells Gene that he has to play sports in the place of Finny himself, Gene says, “I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas” (77). Gene loses who he is to become the powerful Finny because told him to do so. He feels the need to give up his identity seeing that he has the order to do. This results in an unequal friendship because a true friend would never force someone to do something that would make them lose who they actually are. Gene and Finny’s unbalanced friendship eventually causes paranoia and insecurity on the less powerful side known as Gene because he is giving himself up.

He thinks Finny is trying to sabotage his studies so that he can be number one at that too! In reality, Finny is just trying to be a good friend. Gene is jealous of Finny’s athleticism, but he covers it up by the thought that all Finny wants to do is hurt him. In attempt to have some fun, Finny wants Gene and some other boys to jump from a tree limb into a river. This challenge is something that has never been done by a boy their age. After doing it once, Finny later convinces Gene to leave his studies and come do it again. While the boys are on the tree limb, Finny stumbles, falls into the river, and breaks his leg. Since Finny can no longer participate in any sporting events, he decides to train Gene for the 1944 Olympics. Gene eventually comes to the conclusion that “[Finny] had never been jealous of [him] for a second. Now [he] know[s] there was and never could have been any rivalry between [them]” (Knowles 78). Gene realizes that Finny wasn’t ever jealous of him, and that pushing Finny from the tree is a mistake that he will later regret. Finny dies after falling down the stairs and a failed surgery, so Gene begins to feel guilty for his actions. Gene had earlier decided to enlist in the war, and had told the other boys about it. After a lot of thinking, he eventually decides not to enlist in the war. Gene now begins to see the wrong doing he had participated in earlier,

“But I no longer needed this vivid false identity . . . I felt, a sense of my own real authority and worth, I had many new experiences and I was growing up “(156). Gene’s self-identity battle ends and he finds his real self. Gene’s developing maturity is also shown when he tells the truth about Leper. His growing resentment against having to mislead people helps Gene become a better person. When Brinker asks about Leper, Gene wants to lie and tell him he is fine but his resentment is stronger than him. Instead Gene comes out and tells the truth that Leper has gone crazy. By pushing Finny out of the tree, crippling him for life and watching him die; Gene kills a part of his own character, his essential purity. Throughout the whole novel Gene strives to be Finny, but by the end he forms a character of his own. Gene looks into his own heart and realizes the evil. “. . . it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart” (201). He grasps that the creation of personal problems creates wars. Gene comes to acknowledge Finny’s uniqueness and his idealism and greatly admires his view of the world. He allows Finny’s influence to change him and eliminates the self-ignorance. At Finny’s funeral Gene feels that he buries a part of himself, his innocence. “I could not escape a feeling

After Finny tells Gene that Gene will play sports instead of him, Gene experiences a “soaring sense of freedom” that reveals, to him, that “this must have been [his] purpose from the first”(86). Gene is happy to do sports for Finny, since Phineas’s athleticism is now gone. This shows both boys think they are the same, as they are clearly happy to be in the other’s control, describing it as freedom. While the reader has seen Gene’s codependence towards Finny, the reader has not seen vice versa. Even though Finny realizes that Gene is the one that caused his fall from the tree, Gene can “hardly believe it”, when Finny indirectly shows that “he needed [him]”(108). This reveals how Finny also is codependent of Gene, conveying how Gene is astonished to see that Finny still wants his companionship even after the wrongs Gene has committed. As a result, this evinces how Gene realizes his mistakes, showing the dynamic nature of

If Gene and Finny had not been friends, Gene would not have thought much of Finny’s fall. To illustrate the point, Gene sneaks out to the hospital after Finny breaks his leg a second time and he offers to fix Finny’s leg up: “‘I want to fix your leg up,’ I said crazily but in a perfectly normal tone of voice which made my words sound even crazier, to me” (185). Furthermore, Gene regrets he did not show Finny appreciation when he should have; Gene realizes that he made the mistake. Later, Gene was more accepting of Finny after Finny’s first fall because it proved to Gene that Finny was human and he made mistakes that will not be forgotten. Consequently, Gene did not appreciate Finny enough for Finny to realize that he was being appreciated.

This affects Gene’s internal war with himself by he thinks that Finny and him are competitors and everything is a contest between them, but when Finny tells him that they are best pals he doesn’t know what to say to Finny because everything he thought about their friendship was false. Secondly, Gene is being affected by his impersonal war with Finny that causes Gene to treat Finny with. Gene and Finny were at the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session to have Leper jump out of the tree but Finny decided that before Leper jumps out of the tree that Gene and he would jump out of the tree together with Finny climbing up the tree first. “Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud.”

First, Gene admits to being guilty of shaking a tree in order to injure Finny when he visits him at his home, making Finny livid, and temporarily tearing them apart. Gene is envious of Finny’s athletic ability and bravery. One way Finny shows his bravery is by jumping off a tree for fun. Gene is greatly threatened by the bravery, so he decides to strip it from Finny by shaking the tree one day, making him fall and suffer an injury. Consequently, he instantly regrets his decision, but he realizes that the damage is done. Remorsefully, he wants to apologize for his terrible choice, but when he tries to talk about the situation and confess, Finny is in denial and starts to get angry. Finny’s denial is evident when he says “‘I don’t know anything. Go away. I’m tired and you make me sick. Go away’” (Knowles 70). This dialogue shows how Finny did not believe that Gene caused the incident even after the confession. This is because he believes that Gene would not do such an action. The confession tears Finny apart to the point that he lashes out at Gene and wants him to leave his house. If Gene did not commit the notorious action, Finny would not have to feel the pain physically from the injury, and mentally from the idea that Gene would hurt him, and the boys could have a stronger friendship.

William Hall made a good point when he said, “We go on and on about our differences. But, you know, our differences are less important than our similarities. People have a lot in common with one another, whether they see that or not.” Our differences are less important than our similarities because if people want to make friends or just be happier in life, then they need to focus on not the differences in other people but instead the similar things that are between them and others. If people focus on what is different between them and someone else instead of seeing what similarities there are between each other, then there would be a lot more happiness. People are similar to many others in a lot of ways. They just chose not to see it and focus