A Separate Peace. Chapter analisys Essay

When Gene visits Leper at his home in Vermont, he discovers Leper’s mental instability and fears the same will happen to him in the future when he enlists in the army. Gene states, “I didn’t care what I said to him now; it was myself I was worried about. For if Leper was psycho it was the army which had done it to him, and I and all of us were on the brink of the army” (Knowles 135). Gene is now coming to the realization that war can have negative effects on those involved and is beginning to fear the war. Previously, just as the other boys, he has been shielded from the ugly truths of war by attending Devon, alien to the idea of the violence that it contains. Now, he has achieved a new understanding and has now created an informed opinion on war. This serves as a turning point for Gene because he is losing his innocence and discovering more about the war beyond the walls of

| Comparing himself to a wild man, he felt as if he came to make Finny feel worse. Finny had already suffered an accident, and Gene is making him revisit it. Gene avoids the fact he is the one who jounced the tree limb.

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

7. Where does Gene visit Finny after he returns from summer vacation? At Finny’s house in Boston

Finny suggests that him and Gene should do a double jump, and right as they are about to jump, Gene bounces the limb and Finny falls. This is completely out of jealousy.

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).

Gene Forrester- The main character, from whom we get a first person account from in much of the book. Gene is best friends with Finny, whom he admires and envies for being an amazing athlete and a smooth talker. Gene is very intelligent and gets one of the highest grades at the Devon school. He is very adventurous and is often breaking every rule possible with Finny. One day Finny and Gene decide to climb a tall tree and jump into the river. When Finny is about to jump off of the branch, Gene wiggles the branch, causing Finny to fall and shatters his leg. When Finny is told that he may never be able to play sports again, Gene feels responsible and tries to convince Finny that it was his fault.

Gene’s envy and intimidation of Finny caused great internal turmoil with himself throughout the story. He went through and identity crisis because he was unsure of who he was and who he wanted to be. In the story, Gene said, “I went along, as I always did, with any new invention of Finny’s” (Knowles 117). He always went along with everything Finny proposed or did; this gave him little to no time to discover who he really was. This lack of personal discovery lead him to doubt who he was. This internal conflict within Gene also affected his personal actions. Before Finny’s fall, Gene said, “I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb” (Knowles

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,

When gene and finny jump out of the tree together it displays both friendship and loyalty because it shows that they both trust each other and are really close because they jumped out of a tree together

He only made Gene fall out of the tree. “Then my knees bent and I jounced the limb…” (pg. 60). Finny really trusted Gene and always thought he would have his back. He did not want to think otherwise of him.

Because of Gene’s sense of judgement, he built up an alternate reality of a rivalry between him and his best friend, Finny.

One of the things Gene feels lesser in is his competition with Finny in sports. For example, Finny broke a swimming record and Gene was very jealous that he broke it.

One instance where Knowles uses characterization in order to achieve his purpose is when Gene develops the feeling that Finny is trying to sabotage his chance of being "head of the class, valedictorian" (41). Gene thinks since Finny is the best at sports, he also desires the need to be the best scholastically, although he is "a very poor student" (44). This is Gene's explanation for assuming that Finny "deliberately set out to wreck my [Gene's] studies" (43). Gene, enraged by Finny's actions, figures the motive behind Finny trying to keep him so busy is to throw him off track with his schoolwork. Although this incident caused much jealousy and rivalry in Gene, it actually benefited him tremendously. Gene reveals, " 'I became quite a student after that. . . . Now I became not just good but exceptional' " (44).

This shows how Finny moves in groups. He isn't just athletic; he is also very intelligent and is always at the top of his class.