Themes Of Of Mice And Men And A Separate Peace

“A Separate Peace,” by John Knowles focuses Gene and Finny’s friendship throughout the story. Any friendship is difficult to maintain and goes through many different phases. Separate feelings at the title of the story suggest their friendship has ups and downs. It goes into the idea of how people are not the same. Neither character has an understanding of who they are and how their actions and thoughts can affect people around them. This lack of understanding of oneself eventually causes the destruction of their relationship.

In A Separate Peace, the characters battle with their identity. Similar to the many other characters that struggle to be themselves, Gene tries to be other people. Given that Gene has a difficult time with his identity, he tries to be someone he is not: Gene tries to be Finny. Finny can be described as athletic, outgoing, and a risk taker, all things that Gene does not possess. Although Gene is far from Finny’s qualities he tries to duplicate them. Gene says “I decided to put on his clothes (Knowles 29).” When Gene puts on Finny’s clothes it starts his obsession of being Finny. The obsession Gene has continues, for example Finny told Gene that he wanted to one day become an Olympic athlete until he broke his leg. In response, Gene

Throughout John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, Gene’s internal struggle is reflected in the war taking place. In the beginning of the story, Finny tells Gene that he was reading the paper and saw that “[the United States] bombed Central Europe...”(25). At this point in the story, it is 1942, which is the midst of World War II. This reflects Gene’s attitude toward Finny. As the war starts to escalate and the United States enters, Gene starts to loathe Finny for reasons that are entirely from Gene’s head. When Finny returns to Devon for the winter session, he has convinced himself, and soon convinces Gene, that “there isn’t any war”(115). Around this time, Gene pushes away his hateful thoughts towards Finny and convinces himself that Finny and him

Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace, also reveals that human nature never changes. Knowles, reveals the tragic flaw of jealousy, that has continuously plagued human nature. Gene’s envy of Finny’s exceptional personality and character, reveals this terrible flaw. Human nature has always contained jealousy or envy, but Knowles’ novel reveals its truly destructive nature, through the characters’ thoughts and actions. Gene’s character, illustrates the progression of human nature and jealousy. A pattern is revealed, that simple jealousy forces action, which in turn, creates guilt and internal punishment. This represents the static nature of humans, who change very little. Gene’s envy, forces him to act, which creates enormous guilt that he must now carry. Knowles reveals that humans do not change or learn, even after a great tragedy. Gene may have learned from his actions, but all the other characters, will take no heed. This shows that although humans should learn from their past mistakes, they do not pay attention, and continue doing what they know they should not. Gene “jounced the limb,” (Knowles 60,) thus ending Finny’s life. Humans however, will not change, and another person

The climax of A Separate Peace is when Finny falls out of the tree by the river. Gene immediately thinks that he jounced the limb and he is at fault for Phineas’s broken leg. Gene’s guilty conscious came out and told Finny that he jounced the limb, but Finny would not believe it. Gene couldn’t believe this rivalry had come to a fateful end. Gene was put on trial and the truth came out to Finny. He had fallen down the stairs and broken his leg again. During surgery, Finny had passed away due to a bone marrow flowing through his blood stream and straight to his heart. Gene couldn’t believe that Finny, his best friend, had passed away. Had this all been from his doubting of Finny? Did he cause Finny’s

A theme is the meaning behind a story, occasionally defined as the moral of the story. Themes can differ from one end of the world to the other, as it does in many books. The Droughtlanders by Carrie Mac is a futuristic version of the world which has been divided into two parts. The rich and the poor, the healthy and the sick, otherwise known as Keyland and Droughtland. Keyland is where all the rich people with extravagant lands and lives live. Droughtland is a disease-ridden land where all poor people are being forced to live. Society treats Droughtland poorly and they decide to take action. Thus starting the revolution. Carrie Mac portrays many themes in different ways throughout the book. However the major theme the book revolves around is that; No matter how rich or poor a person is, or what gender, race, or sexuality they are, in the end, they are all the same and deserve to be treated equally. In addition, the book shows that when everyone is treated equally there is so much more that everyone can accomplish. The theme is being portrayed through the narrative point of view, setting and atmosphere, and character development.

Theme is the subject of talk, a topic, or morals that the author is trying to get across to the readers. When reading an excerpt, the theme is not directly stated in the text, so you must dig deeper into the context to understand the morals the author is trying to portray. In both Angela's Ashes and The Street, we can detect a similar theme of struggling to get through life’s obstacles. When reading the two different stories, we can further pick out the theme by using character, events, and the setting.

Throughout the novels, Of Mice and Men and A Separate Peace, there are plenty of similarities shown from the contrasting themes to the character’s growing personality. In each story, is a set of friends that do everything together and go everywhere together. It is their common hopes and dreams that encourage them to succeed and hopefully achieve what they wish. The characters’ friendships are seem almost inseparable; however, they face many hardships because of physical and mental differences shown within. The predominant themes echoed in the novels, Of Mice and Men and A Separate Piece, are the hopes of achieving the American dream and the values and struggles of friendship.

In John Knowles, A Separate Peace, Gene waged a war of jealousy towards his best friend, Finny. Finny was blinded by innocence and did not foresee Gene's true intentions. Throughout the novel, Gene's jealousy continued to grow along with ignorance that he attributed to his own heart. Gene's jealousy and ignorance caused him to deeply hurt his friend Finny. Gene was not able to control all of his hatred, anger, and jealousy when he and Finny were up on the tree during a Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session meeting.

Finny's death was a shock and a dark part of the novel, A Separate Peace. John Knowles, the author, dissolved the drama between Gene and Finny. Sadly to say his death was necessary in the novel even though it seemed to add more guilt towards Gene. A Separate Peace written by John Knowles is a novel about Gene`s friendship with Finny.

This change is shown in “A Separate Peace” when the residing feelings of happiness fade to confusion and tragedy. As the summer session comes to an end, Finny falls from a tree and shatters his leg. Gene witnesses this and affirms “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…” (Knowles 52). This abnormal mistake in Finny’s behavior was caused by Gene’s recently developed feelings of resentment towards his friend. Gene thinks “Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies” (Knowles 45). Gene purposely jounced the limb Finny was standing on due to his rash feelings of animosity. These feelings are conveniently aligned with the season shift by the author to add character development and change, as well as symbolism and depth in his writing. Gene’s shift from a trusting, willing friend to a skeptical, apprehensive enemy shows how the season of fall changes the characters in this novel. In final analysis, autumn brings about a negative change in the boy's psyche and forces them to face unpleasant realities and come to terms with their friendship.

A Separate Peace demonstrates how Gene's envy and imitation of Finny affect him, how it affects Gene and Finny's friendship, and how in the end he has finally gained peace. To begin with, Gene's envy and imitation of Finny affects him in many ways. One way he is influenced is that he is not his person. In the novel, Knowles writes," But when I looked in the mirror it was no remote aristocrat I had become, no character out of daydreams. I was Phineas,

Throughout A Separate Peace, John Knowles utilizes the war as a symbol for Gene’s acceptance of reality to establish his coming-of-age plot. In the beginning of the novel, Gene believes that nothing could actually be negative in the world occurring around him; for instance, after the boys learn of an advancement in the war, Gene believes that the “[b]ombs in Central Europe were completely unreal to [the boys] here” because the summer session at Devon “was too fair for [the boys] to accept something like that” (30). Since the war is still distant, like the need for Gene to accept reality, he can relish in his innocence and deny the war; throughout the denial of the war, he also is denying the fact that anything cynical could happen. As the story progresses, Gene subconsciously jounces a tree limb in which Finny was also balancing on, causing him to fall and break his leg; Finny’s fall is the catalyst for Gene beginning to acknowledge the harsh realities of the world.

The common theme of friendship and the impact of decisions made in friendship is shown throughout the novels Of Mice and Men and A Separate Peace. In Of Mice and Men the main characters, George and Lennie, have an unbreakable bond that was tested by one decision. In A Separate Peace, the main characters, Gene and Finny, are attached at the hip and one decision that Gene made changed their friendship forever. In Of Mice and Men and A Separate Peace the true friendship between George and Lennie and Gene and Finny, is revealed through the important decisions that were made regarding each other's well being.

A Separate Peace (Chapter 1) is a novel excerpt written by John Knowles. Jean is a student at the Devon School in which he makes acquaintance with Phineas, or Finny. The two take on a jump from a tree in which they become friends afterwards. Knowles uses the concept of opposites attract and then drive each other crazy to drive the plot. At first the two make acquaintance well, only to the sheer differences between them to force a split. Gene and Finny are polar opposites in the sense that Gene is more rational in his decision making where on the contrary Finny is more impulsive and makes decisions without thinking. Gene begins to see Finny’s impact on his decisions, “What was I doing up her anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid