Double Entry Journal "A Separate Piece"

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

In the middle of the novel, Gene starts to understand events as time passes. One particular event is when Gene visits Leper. Gene learns that, Leper has turned crazy. “I didn’t care what I said to him now; it was I I was worried about. For if Leper was a psycho it was the army that had done it to him, and I and all of us were on the brink of the army.”(144) Gene realizes that it wasn’t he who turned Leper crazy, but it was the army, and him and Brinker were about to enlist. Gene understands and realizes the horrors that are really out there in the universe. It transforms Gene by letting Gene understand the horrors and the reality of things that are happening.

World War II took many lives away from people, physically and mentally. The struggle inside of Phineas’ mind about if he meant to hurt Gene on purpose is a type of war. He tries to reassure himself that it was only an accident, but he can’t help but think that he could have done it out of envy of Gene’s talents. Some soldiers came back home mentally disturbed and not the same as they were before the war. Gene visited a friend from school that had just gotten back from the war and he was an extremely different

Gene contemplates his and Finny’s friendship many times in the book, but despite what Gene may have thought, Finny was a good friend to him. He always took Gene’s feelings into account, and through all that happened he had faith in Gene. But Gene never knew this,

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).

It wasn’t my neck, but my understanding which was menaced. He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he.” This is what Gene fears, more than Finny’s charm or athleticism but his goodness of heart, how what he says is what he means for his motives. What I don’t understand is why Gene is relieved of fear when Finny falls from the tree and breaks some bones in his body. His athleticism was destroyed, but his character wasn’t. Maybe it was because that’s one less thing Finny is able to do, but I’m not sure what to make of this. In addition to what I said in the first paragraph, when Brinker brings in Gene and Finny into the courtroom to investigate the accident, although Gene fears that the truth will be told, he’s not the only one there who holds the emotion of fear. “Finny turned toward me. “You were down at the bottom, weren’t you?” he asked not in the official courtroom tone he had used before, but in a friend’s voice.” Finny fears Gene’s betrayal that he has altered the past in his mind to avoid facing the truth. In the beginning of the investigation, Finny is unsure about what happened. First he claims that he took a wrong step and lost his balance. When Gene is the interrogated about whether he was in the tree or not, Finny aggressively said, “How do you expect him to remember?” “There was a

“I wanted to see Phineas, and only Phineas. With him there was no conflict except between athletes… This was the only conflict he had ever believed in.” (page 152) When Gene returns from Leper’s house, all he wants to do is see Finny. Gene says that Finny never believed in any conflict, which alludes to when Gene admitted to making him fall out of the tree, and Finny refusing to believe him. Gene wants to forget about what happened, as the event is fresh in his mind after coming back from Leper’s. He still subconsciously trusts Finny to not bring up the subject of what happened at the tree.

that he is weak. Subconsciencely, he is powerful. If he is not, he could never

In chapter 1, Finny tries to convince Gene to jump off of a tree branch into a river. He climbs up the tree to the branch and has the thought, “What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this?” Next thing he does is jump, without saying he doesn’t want to.

It shows how sometimes Gene was very jealous of Finny, so jealous that he harmed him. The irony in this is that Finny and Gene have been friends for so long, and Finny didn’t get angry with Gene, but instead forgave him, which caused Gene to become more jealous of someone who was supposed to be his friend. Even though Finny never did anything to deserve the fall, he still fell, and Gene became friends with other boys, but was not jealous of them the slightest bit. Other offers of friendship oddly opened Gene’s eyes. So in the novel, Gene displayed the dark side of adolescences, by hurting his apparent best friend.

In the first chapter, Finny and Gene’s relationship is strong and this is represented by the healthy tree branch they and the other boys jump off of into the lake. Gene is not normally the type of person to just jump out of a tree, but he is willing to because of his trust in Finny. Despite his own fear, Gene trusts Finny enough to jump. Gene says, “ With the sensation that I was throwing my life away, I jumped into space”(17). This demonstrates that the trust between the two boys is very strong because Gene is willing to do things that he is not comfortable with. Since Finny was there by his side he has no problem doing it. Gene and Finny’s relationship is able to thrive when it is healthy like the tree branch that they jump off.

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

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.

At first, Gene is against being open and is very shy- this type of individual does not like to tell other people what he feels about them or share his own ideas. For example, he always backs up Finny's insane thoughts and assists him with beginning a social club at school. Gene does not want Finny to know what he truly thinks about the club so he remains quiet about his considerations. The members of the "Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session" start them by asking them to jump off a tall tree branch into the river. At the point, when Gene chooses to jump off the tree, Finny starts to persuade him to jump off. While he stands high up on the tree he thinks to himself "What am 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? (32). The thought of fairness is more important to Gene when he considers his friendship with Finny. In any case, his real misery is not over jumping and biting the dust, it is the fear of being the weaker companion. Despite the fact that he battles with self-character, he needs to be more like his saint towards Finny. Gene changes by taking an interest in joining scholastic clubs and other school events. Most of these events, he is not interested with until Finny and he became friends. Throughout the meaningful friendship, it turns into a more open and transforms into an all the more social individual. One major point a critic had made is that "The two stay friends as long as the issue remains overlooked” (Adney). The reason their companionship is ignored is on account of Gene never enlighten Finny realize what he regards about his thoughts. The most important key to friendship is talking and being social with one another. Then again, that is something Gene is lacking and trying to improve