Importance Of Friendship In A Separate Peace

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.

As Gene and Phineas begin to establish a close friendship, Gene secretly develops a strong sense of jealousy towards Phineas, which leads to a life-changing incident. Fear of the unknown and those who are different is part of human nature. Gene and Phineas are complete opposites; one is a serious scholar, while the other is an athletically talented individual with a free, unbalanced spirit. When Gene notices that he is beginning to lose his identity to Phineas, he decides that he must get rid of that part of him by pushing Phineas out of a tree, leaving Phineas with a broken leg. Right before the incident, Gene and Phineas get into a small altercation, which causes Gene to realize Phineas’ innocence. Gene states that “[Phineas] had never been jealous of me for a second [...] there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the

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

He’s always trying to find a way to impress them to make him feel better about himself. For example, he tries to romanticize his background by hanging up pictures of plantations in his room. “Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb” (60). In this quote, Gene let his jealousy control him and he jounced the limb Finny was on. It seems like it was more of an impulse and that he never actually meant to hurt Phineas. By the end of the book, Gene has become very loyal to Phineas because he learned that he shouldn’t take things for granted. “I would have talked about that, but they would not, and I would not talk about Phineas in any other way” (197). He feels differently about Phineas after he died and he has dealt with his jealousy. Gene used to view anything as a competition with his friends, but he realizes that it was never a

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

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

example, he and three others come to look at a tree, which is considered among

All throughout this novel, Gene is in a constant battle with himself about the nature of his friendship with Phineas. This arguably was the war that Gene dealt with prior to World War 2. In war, you have enemies. There are many different interpretations of who or what Gene’s enemy was. Gene mentions his enemy in the quote “My war ended before I even put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there.” This quote from the novel A Separate peace by John knowles states that Gene had an enemy, and it is up to us and our wise judgement to decide whether this enemy is his own youth and innocence, or his guilt.

In “a Separate Peace”, Gene made one selfish decision that ruined Phineas's (or Finny) life as he knew it. The day Finny fell off the limb of the tree was Gene's fault. Finny had been great at sports, so Gene was motivated to be good at his academics and out do Finny at their school. When Finny had Gene come with him that day to jump out of the tree, Gene thought Finny was trying to take away time from his studies. He jostled the limb which made Finny fall and just happened to break his leg on the fall down; not allowing him to play sports ever again. This decision Gene made costed finny his life. Near the end of the book one of their classmates, Brinker, called a meeting to find the truth about what happened on the tree. Finny ran out because

This is evident as at numerous occasions, Gene identifies his feelings of malice towards Phineas, yet is incapable of suppressing them. As a result, Gene undergoes an internal conflict regarding his relationship with Finny. On one hand, Gene praises and glorifies Finny, by characterizing him as a demigod. On the contrary, Gene has a mistaken notion that him and Finny are competitors, who are “equal in enmity” (Knowles 53). As a result, Gene’s envy for Phineas impedes in his friendship with Finny, thus causing him to harm Phineas. In essence, Gene’s conflict helps demonstrate how people act in their everyday lives. This is due to the fact that every second of every day, people are always wanting more, as they feel that they never seem to have enough. In other words, people never seem to be able to reach their point of satisfaction. Instead, people are constantly attempting to find the hidden implication behind other people’s actions, just like Gene. Therefore, whenever people see another have an item that they do not have, people are instantly envious of others. However, one must remember that jealousy is a lifelong battle, and that it is extremely challenging to surmount. Nevertheless, everyone must attempt to conquer their jealousy and be at ease with what they have, as if one succeeds and everyone follows, then the world will be a better

In the book A Separate Peace, Gene and Phineas are the two main characters, the book being told through Gene’s eyes. Gene suffers from jealousy along with admiration towards Phineas, while Phineas was innocent up until his fall.

The reason for this could be because of Gene being subordinate to Phineas and lack of self confidence. One example of this is when Gene and Phineas are with their friends at the lake and Phineas convinces Gene to jump off of the tree. This shows a difference in personalities as well because Phineas is the kind of person who does what he wants whereas Gene takes orders because he did not have the courage to say no to Phineas. Gene’s lack of trust towards Phineas is what causes him to jounce the limb, resulting in Phineas’s injury. The “ignorance” in Gene’s heart is shown right after the incident when he says, “With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten” (60).

Another time Gene faces the question of "what is identity?", is right after his confrontation with Phineas about studying. Gene accuses Phineas of trying to distract him from studying, and then realizes he was way off in his thinking. Gene expresses, "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."(Knowles, 52). After realizing that Phineas was never jealous of his academic success, Gene feels upset in a way. It dawns upon him that no matter what he did, Phineas and him could never be alike or equal, never of the same quality. He feels down and mad at himself because he wanted to be like Phineas, but realizes he can never be. That feeling of disappointment represents how

Secondly, the theme of friendship is displayed in A Separate Peace when Gene’s love-hate relationship with Phineas is affected after he sees Phineas in the hospital. The realization of Phineas’s true feelings of their friendship comes to light when he refuses to accuse or put any blame on Gene for his disability resulting in Gene’s guilt, admitting he, “thought we were competitors.” (Knowles 63). When Gene visits Phineas back in their hometown during their break, he gets on a, “familiar friendly level” feeling like, “pals trading stories”(Knowles 65). The use of an anaphora is implemented when Gene’s guilty conscious begins to affect him and his struggle to admit he pushed Phineas off the tree becomes distressing as he believes, “it wouldn’t