The marble staircase represents Gene's hatred towards Finny, and when he returns to Devon and encounters the stairs again, he is faced with his past hatred of his old friend. Moreover, the hardness of the marble contributed to breaking Finny's leg once more, which represents how much he hated Finny. He never realized the impact of his hatred and that it was what would directly led to Finny's death.
The marble staircase represent the cold hard facts of Gene's betrayal towards his friend, and as Finny tries to hide from this reality, he falls from his naiveté and meets his end. The stairs, which represent Gene's hatred, takes away Finny's false peace that he shrouds himself with, and forces him into the evils of the world, showing no one can
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It is where the boys spend their summer carefree. However, following Finny's fall from the tree, the calmness will soon flow into the murky waters of Naguamsett. As Gene stops at the footbridge to gaze upstream at Devon River he realizes that there is a dawning bitter war the boys at Devon will soon face just like the clear waters of Devon will soon enter the murky and unknown waters of Naguamsett .
While Gene was a student at Devon he feared adulthood but when he returns the fears he had as a child are overcome. The tree has lost some of its pAfter Gene jounces the limb and causes cause Finny to fall onto the bank, he feels a sense of relief from his anger and jealousy, which leads him to jump from the tree with a sense of confidence for the first time. In this moment, Gene has jumped himself from his childhood innocence and lead everyone to maturity. d as a child he realized that he has grown. In this moment he is able to put down the old fears that has haunted
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Leper, who seemed to be the most untouched by the war, is the first to enlist, showing that the war has reached into the deepest part of Devon and dragged the most unlikely candidate out into war, bringing the fear of adulthood right to the boys, showing how potent the war is. Although Leper thinks he is ready to enlist, deep inside he is scared and truly is not ready for war or adulthood. This quote represent all the boys in Devon who are not yet ready to enter adulthood, but are pushed into it because of
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).
On another note, Finny was also very genuine. When he was confronted by a teacher about his absence at dinner , Finny was simply honest, saying “The real reason, sir, was that we just had to jump out of that tree.” He was consistently truthful, no matter what the consequences were. Gene however, was dishonest, not only with himself but with Finny. He lied about the confession that he caused Finny to fall out of the tree, admitting to have been crazy and not thinking.
Finny as they jump from the tree into the river and hold initiations into the
The fictional novel, A Separate Peace was written by John Knowles describes the life at Devon School during WWII. The novel follows two young boys, Gene and Phineas, as they face hardships and struggles throughout their life at Devon during the war. The war dominated life at Devon by creating tough decisions, causing students to act upon a life altering decision, and essentially create a war among each other.
There are multiple examples of Finny and Gene's inability to accept the truth of what happened at the tree. The first one is when Gene admits to Finny that he jounced the limb, but Finny refuses to accept it, calling Gene a "damn fool" (70), and ordering him to go away. This leads Gene to question himself whether he had actually deliberately caused Finny to fall. Gene contemplates, "Could it be that he might even be right? Had I really and definitely and knowingly done it to him after all" (70)? The final and most controversial example of their inability to accept the truth is when Finny can't stand the "investigation" of what happened happened at the tree. After a continued dialogue about what happened, Leper seems to know the truth. But before he is convinced to uncover the mystery, Phineas interrupts, proclaiming that, "[He doesn't] care" (176). Finny subsequently walks across the room and answers in an outburst to Brinker, "You get the rest of the facts, Brinker! You get all your facts! You collect every f---ing fact there is in the world," then plunges out of the door only to fall down the marble steps, re-injure himself, and eventually die during the recovery surgery. Had Finny and Gene accepted the devastating truth between each other and in each of their minds, the story would conclude earlier and Finny would never have
Gene’s jealousy of Finny corrupts their friendship and leads to Finny falling out the tree. Finny states,” It was just some kind of blind impulse you had in the tree there… It wasn’t anything you really felt against me, it wasn’t some kind of hate you’ve felt all along. It wasn’t anything personal” (Alton 183). Finny doesn’t want to believe that the accident was caused because of Gene’s jealousy.
Gene’s impulsive decision to bend the branch and break Finny’s leg led to Gene’s emotional growth. Before the accident, Gene grew increasingly jealous of Finny’s charismatic nature and natural ability to be a leader. This jealousy culminates with Gene bouncing the branch Finny
Acting out of jealousy, Gene resorts to physical aggression towards Finny, resulting in harm inflicted upon his friend. When Finny advises to jump off the tree into the river for entertainment, Gene doesn’t want to, but goes anyway. As they reach the limb from which they are supposed to jump, Gene experiences a moment of jealousy and resentment toward Finny's charisma and athletic
After this, to try and get his innocence back, Gene tries to disillusion himself once again, but this time into believing that he truly didn’t mean to shake the tree branch. “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. It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him do. With unthinking sureness, I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten.” (Knowles 52)
Finny's strong and solid character is again evident the night of the tree jumping in which he fell and broke his leg. Prior to the occurrence, Gene explodes when Finny automatically assumes Gene will be present at the Suicide Society tree "leap"(46). Finny's thinking that studies can just be abandoned at anytime infuriates Gene. Once Gene
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.
Finny is out of school for a while and Gene admits that he caused this on purpose and Finny is distraught about
“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
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,
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