Turning Points In To Kill A Mockingbird

Finny is a manipulative person to others and makes them do what he wants no matter what task they have to do. He doesn’t seem to care too much as long as it works out for him. Finny never gets

How could Finny ever believe the evil going on around him? In the novel “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles, Finny is a superior character. Finny’s best friend deliberately jounces a tree limb, with the act of jealousy taking over him, witch makes him fall of the tree and break his leg. Later on in the story, Finny is forced to face the truth that his best friend wanted to hurt him on purpose. Finny had gotten so mad that he fell down the hard, marble staircase, which later resulted in death due to the bone marrow running through his blood stream and directly to the heart.

Introduction – Finny is the best friend of Gene Forrester. He is very outgoing and athletic along with very humble. For example, when he broke the swimming record he decided to stay humble and instead of letting everyone know, he kept it a secret. He is a cheery kid who always keeps his head up no matter the situation. After he broke his leg, he looked at the bright side and decided to coach Gene for the Olympics. There is, however, like in all people, a bad side. He can sometimes be immature and self centered, along with being manipulative. Is there a side to Finny that we don’t clearly see in the novel?

Everyone makes mistakes. Some mistakes can end in a tragic way. In A Separate Peace, Finny made a mistake that ended in a terrible way. The author, John Knowles, uses details that paints a picture in the reader's mind. When an author uses details, it makes the book a lot more interesting. In the book, John Knowles makes a character, Finny, one of the most athletic but not athletic kids in the school.

First, John Knowles shows that Finny seeks peace by denying the truth. He makes statement about how the war is not real: “Don’t be a sup,” he would say, “there isn’t any war”(115). Finny says this because maybe he does not want to hear about the war unless

Education is not really one of Finny’s favorite things, he is more like the outgoing friend of the group. In the novel, “A Separate Peace”, Gene has a thought about Finny and his education. The quote says “If I was head of the class on Graduation Day and made a speech and won the Ne Plus Ultra Scholastic Achievement Citation, the we would have came out on top…”(Knowles, 52). If you think about it, Finny could be head of the class and graduate and win the prizes if he would put a little

Nothing as he was growing up at home, nothing at Devon, nothing even about the war had broken his harmonious and natural unity” (203). Gene believes Finny an amazing human being, partially due to his charisma and loyalty. Gene then finds peace within himself and his jealousy has in turn diminished. Gene’s thoughts of jealousy portray Finny as charismatic and

Through A Separate Peace, John Knowles is stating that strength does not indicate survival, and that tragedy can strike the weakest or the strongest as in war. Throughout the novel, Finny clearly appears to be a stronger character than Gene. Finny wearing a pink shirt and the Devon school tie as a belt demonstrates Finny’s daredevil attitude, and his manipulative ability when he gets away with it. Even Gene realized that “Finny could get away with anything.”

Finny completely ignores the war going on all around him because since they won’t admit him in anywhere, he prefers to tell himself that it simply isn’t real instead of acknowledging his new handicap. Contrastingly, Gene remains aware of World War Two, and his point of view shows just how immature Phineas acts about it. When Finny complains about the absence of maids at the school, Gene sensibly replies by saying, “‘There’s a war on. It’s not much of a sacrifice, when you think of people starving and

Initially, Finny denies the war and explains that the war was made up by old fat men to make money. Despite all the obvious signs, Phineas continues to reject the wars existence. Finny reveals he wants to join the war, even with a busted leg, but because of his busted leg the generals refused to take him in. Finny believed he would be great in the war effort, which shows his unrealistic standards. Another piece of evidence can be seen when Finny is about to die. Brinker, a friend of Finny and Gene, was trying to get all the facts of the accident, and by the time Leper revealed the whole truth and Finny could no longer deny that Gene had purposely caused the accident. Finny was shocked when he finally accepted reality. After hearing that Gene did intentionally push him off, he fell down the stairs. Towards the end of the novel, Finny goes into surgery to get his bone reset. However, during the procedure, a piece of bone marrow traveled through the bloodstream to Finny’s heart. The bone marrow, filled with DNA, killed Finny. Knowles expresses that Finny is killed by

Finny wouldn’t make a capable soldier due to his purity and innocence. In addition, Finny does not contain an ounce of malice inside of himself. He simply could not kill another human being. Throughout the course of the novel, all Finny ever wanted was fun, which for him was not found in winning or losing, but in playing. Finny’s main belief was “everyone always won at sports,” (page 27). However, war is based off winning and losing. You simply cannot have that mindset during a battle. Gene realizes, Finny lacks desire and comprehension, to do true evil. The closest Finny has ever gotten is in athletics, and even there he constantly switches teams to keep the “competition” going. ”You’d make a mess, a terrible mess, Finny, out of the war” (page 182). Even during a snowball fight Finny switches sides. According to Gene, Finny would not know what side to fight for.

Once Gene told Finny that he purposefully jumped in the tree to make Finny fall, Finny had to realize that the perennial friendship he believed he had with Gene, may have been built on lies. In the book, Finny’s first expression after being told that Gene caused his fall was actually a facial expression; “he looked older than I had ever seen him” (Knowles 99). This shows that as Finny heard his best friend admit to wanting to hurt him, the only person he had put his full trust in. Even though we don’t get to see what Finny is actually thinking, it is safe to infer Finny felt naive, and was completely shattered. Finny’s trust in Gene and throughout the rest of the novel, their friendship is never restores until the last few pages. Towards the end of the book, Finny completely loses his innocence when he finally admits that the war was actually occurring. In the book, once he sees Leper hiding and decides that he is crazy due to the war. Finny then says, “‘then I knew there was a real war on’” (Knowles 241). Throughout the novel, Finny stood very firmly on his belief that the war was fake -- that no one could hate each other that much -- but once he decided to admit that it was real, it was like his hope had gone

The significance of Finny’s saying is that he isn't physically enabled to be enlisted into the war, so he doesn’t believe that the war exists. Also since he’s Finny doesn’t want to take understand that soon the people at Devon school are going to be enlisted into war, while he can’t because he doesn’t have the physical ability to be enlisted. There isn’t a war because since his leg injury, he couldn’t compete in the Olympic Games of 1944.

Finny did a lot of risky things, that most people would not be able to pull off, but somehow he always manages to slip away with no punishment. Unknowingly, Finny went to a party, the headmaster was also attending it. As usual, Finny was out of dress code, wearing a neon shirt and their school tie as a belt. Somehow he talked himself out of trouble. Gene says “I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn’t help envying him that a little (Knowles 9).” Finny continued testing his luck, with skipping chapel and classes, and test, and meetings. In the article "A Separate Peace: The Fall from Innocence" James Ellis writes “Incapable of the spiritual purity of Phineas, Gene finds himself jealous of Finny's ability to flout Devon rules.” All of this grew on Gene and started to make him very jealous of something he did not have. Trying the ultimate dare, Finny decided to go to the beach, Gene says “The beach was hours away by bicycle, forbidden, completely out of all bounds. Going there risked expulsion (Knowles 20).” Finny went through with his plan and spent a night at the beach, and received no punishments or disciplinary actions. As Gene was struggling with his identity, he saw that Finny could do things he could not. All those things made Gene jealous and gave him something to focus on, other than solving his identity

Finny is out of school for a while and Gene admits that he caused this on purpose and Finny is distraught about