In the novel, A Separate Peace written by John Knowles, the hero, Gene Forrester experiences the battle to accomplish and keep up a different peace. His character throughout the book slowly turns into envy, dread, love, and disrespect for his so called best friend compete for control over his life. Along with his immaturity, it is the sense of human instinct that help Gene to understand that his real enemy was not his best friend Phineas, but himself and human nature. It helped him understand that internal affairs were not caused by outer sources, but rather "by something insensible in the human heart" (193). Teenage friendships are the most complex friendships because of the suppressed feelings of contempt one person may feel about another. …show more content…
Phineas represents the peace that is lost as Gene grows more and more anxious, making it nearly impossible to get rid of the enemy inside of himself. Gene and Finny enter their summer with the idea that their friendship is flawless. At the beginning of the story, Gene seems to accept Finny’s superior athletic ability, but he hated the fact that he feels like Finny is flaunting his abilities. Finny saves Gene when he grabs Genes hand to keep him from falling when he loses his balance in the tree. Gene feels that he should not feel inclined to show gratitude toward Phineas, because he does not like feeling clumsier or lesser than Finny. Instead, he blames his misfortune in the tree on Phineas. Finny is also the leader of the duo in their friendship. The balance of the friendship is maintained when Phineas thinks of something to do, and Gene goes along with it. The problem with this is that Gene only follows Finny so that he would not lose the friendship. Gene never speaks up when he has a problem, which shows a clear lack of communication. Another large factor that destroys the bond between them is Genes jealousy. Gene is extremely jealous of Finny’s athletic abilitty and social power. Finny has the ability to talk his way out of any tough situation. Gene observes
Throughout A Separate Peace, Knowles carefully, yet successfully develops the inevitable loss of innocence theme. He is able to prove the Latin inscription “Here Boys Come to Be Made Men” (165), by describing the necessity of transition to adulthood. If Finny never accepted the tragedy that occurred to him and the new perspective of the world, he wouldn’t have been able to live beyond his illusion. If Leper didn’t let go of his imaginary world of nature, he would not have been able to become the individual he is at the end of the novel. And if Gene did not try to fight his enemy he would not have resolved the issue of self-identity. Knowles effectively develops the theme, thus portraying it as a necessary part of life.
Before Gene and Finny went to perform a double jump off the tree, Gene again starts contemplating ways that Finny is jealous of him. Gene states, “The thought was, You and Phineas are even already. You are even in enmity. You are both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone. You did hate him for breaking that school swimming record, but so what? He hated you for getting an A in every course but one last term. You would have had an A in that one except for him. Except for him” (Knowles 53) . Gene knew that he had an immense amount of jealousy towards Finny, so instead of trying to remove it, he comes up with a plethora of ideas to try and justify it. Gene thinks of these ideas right before he jounces the tree limb. Gene narrates, “Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb(Knowles, 60). Gene’s differing feelings are expressed in a small gesture which demolishes Finny’s life. Seeing Finny fail briefly relieved Gene’s anger and jealousy. Gene says, “It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him make. With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten” (Knowles, 60). This is the first time that Gene jumps off the tree with complete confidence. The failure of his lethal rival allows Gene to behave as Finny, and ultimately become
Gene was only a mediocre athlete and is always jealous of Finny. They form a Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session which includes jumping from a tree into a river as its initiation. Eventually, Finny falls from the tree fracturing his leg. This leads to Finny’s death and Gene struggle to find himself. The relationship between these two boys proves my thesis statement; a friend and an enemy can be one in the same.
Friendship is a necessity throughout life whether it is during elementary school or during adulthood. Some friendships may last a while and some may last for a year; it depends on the strength of the bond and trust between the two people. In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the main characters, Gene and Finny, did not have a pure friendship because it was driven by envy and jealousy, they did not feel the same way towards each other and they did not accurately understand each other.
Gene believes that people are deliberately out to get him and concentrates only on grasping the evil within his friends. Therefore, Gene decides to defeat his enemies before he gets defeated himself. During the summer session at Devon, Gene encounters a dark suspicion that his friend Finny is drawing him away from his studies in order to make him fail. This makes sense to Gene since he religiously follows the rules to win approval from the staff at Devon, and anyone who persuades him to disobey these rules wishes failure upon him. Therefore, Finny
Carl Jung was a disciple of Sigmund Freud, despite the two having conflicting ideas. One of Jung’s most well known and accepted theories was the existence of different types of archetypes in the brain. These include the ego, which is where our conscious awareness and sense of identity reside, and the shadow, which is the part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. In the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the protagonist Gene exemplifies the shadow, while his friend, Finny, personifies the ego. The author narrates through the shadow, though he clearly supports the ego. However, he also makes it apparent that it is wrong to be dominated by either archetype.
It brings up several valid points and presents new ways of thinking that the reader may not recognize until digging deeper into A Separate Piece. Chapter 7: After the Fall gives the reader a more knowledgeable perspective on the novel and its characters, especially Gene and Finny and the relationship that the two have. Without viewing this literary analysis, a student wishing to write a paper on A Separate Peace would have great difficulty suggesting and supporting ideas involving Gene and Finny’s
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 doing well. Finny has a reputation for being the the best athlete in school, and Gene attempts to counterbalance Finny’s power by being the best student. After a while of joining Finny’s activities, Gene thinks that Finny is intentionally trying to make him fail out of school. He starts to dislike Finny and his activities, and Gene starts interrupt...
Throughout the novel, A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles conveys many messages of symbolism. The symbolism can be found in an array of ways, ranging from internal war, to the theme of human aggression, and a variety of religious principles. The main characters, Gene and Phineas, and their story could be paralleled to the biblical story of Adam and Eve. The similarities can be seen in the way in which in both of the stories, everyone is living in perfect harmony and peace until something comes along to disrupt it. Also in how the main characters do something out of jealousy, greed, and selfishness; and in addition, how Finny's fall out of a tree relates to the “Fall of Mankind.”
In conclusion Gene and Finny aren’t friends. True friends do not envy each other, or wage war with each other. True friends would stick with each other to the end, they do not envy, and most importantly they do not intentionally harm each other. Gene and Finny’s relationship is a perfect example of how envy and jealousy can corrupt the minds of everyday people. Just like what Oliver Stone said “ you should never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy” because in the end it is Genes envy that took Finny’s life, and it is Genes consequence to bear that burden of death he brought upon himself
In John Knowle’s A Separate Peace, symbols are used to develop and advance the themes of the novel. One theme is the lack of an awareness of the real world among the students who attend the Devon Academy. The war is a symbol of the "real world", from which the boys exclude themselves. It is as if the boys are in their own little world or bubble secluded from the outside world and everyone else. Along with their friends, Gene and Finny play games and joke about the war instead of taking it seriously and preparing for it. Finny organizes the Winter Carnival, invents the game of Blitz Ball, and encourages his friends to have a snowball fight. When Gene looks back on that day of the Winter Carnival, he says, "---it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace" (Knowles, 832). As he watches the snowball fight, Gene thinks to himself, "There they all were now, the cream of the school, the lights and leaders of the senior class, with their high IQs and expensive shoes, as Brinker had said, pasting each other with snowballs"(843).
In the early pages of the novel, Finny confesses that Gene is his best friend. This is considered a courageous act as the students at Devon rarely show any emotion. And rather than coming back with similar affection, Gene holds back and says nothing. Gene simply cannot handle the fact that Finny is so compassionate, so athletic, so ingenuitive, so perfect. As he put it, "Phineas could get away with anything." (p. 18) In order to protect himself from accepting Finny's compassion and risking emotional suffering, Gene creates a silent rivalry with Finny, and convinced himself that Finny is deliberately attempting to ruin his schoolwork. Gene decides he and Finny are jealous of each other, and reduces their friendship to cold trickery and hostility. Gene becomes disgusted with himself after weeks of the silent rivalry. He finally discovers the truth, that Finny only wants the best for Gene, and had no hidden evil intentions. This creates a conflict for Gene as he is not able to deal with Finny's purity and his own dark emotions. On this very day Finny wants to jump off of the tree branch into the Devon river at the same time as Gene, a "double jump" (p. 51), he says, as a way of bonding. It was this decision, caused by Finny's affection for Gene and outgoing ways that resulted in drastic change for the rest of his life.
Gene understands that Finny is unable to make a transition into adulthood when he says, “You’d get things so scrambled up nobody would know who to fight anymore. You’d make a mess, a terrible mess, Finny, out of the war” (191). Finny is unable to make an enemy out of anyone therefore preventing him from finding any real internal war to fight. Gene is already experiencing a mental and emotional battle from Finny’s fall allowing him to enter adulthood. Childhood can not thrive forever, adults cannot carry the careless characteristics of a small boy, and this is why Phineas can never made it to adulthood; he can never fully reveal an internal fight with true emotion behind it. Gene is shattered to the doctor say, “‘This is something I think boys of your generation are going to see a lot of,’ he said quietly, ‘and I will have to tell you about it now. Your friend is dead.’ He was incomprehensible” (193). Nevertheless, this marks the end of Gene’s war and grants him entrance into adulthood. Phineas’ death is the true mark that one can not be a child forever, they must find a fight inside their head that requires emotional and intellectual strength to become an
Additionally, Gene justifies his hatred towards Finny by assuming Finny feels hatred towards him because of his excellence in academics. At this moment, Gene does not attempt to deny his shadow. Rather, he embraces his shadow completely, allowing it take him over and make false accusations against his own best friend. In Gene’s mind, “Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies. That explained blitz all, that explained the nightly meetings of the Super Suicide Society, that explains his insistence that I share all his diversions.
Gene jounces a limb of the tree he and Finny were standing on, causing Finny to fall and break his leg. Gene's jealousy of Finny's perfection causes him to have childish feelings of resentment and hatred. After Finny's leg was broken, Gene realized "that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between" (Knowles 51) him and Finny. Gene looked at himself and became conscious of what a terrible, self-absorbed friend he had been. Understanding there was no competition caused him to discard the majority of his feelings of jealousy. Getting rid of these feelings made him grow-up because he was no longer spending countless hours believing a childish game was being played between Finny and him. Gene began to understand more of Finny's goodness and love towards all, making him strive to be more like Finny.