Jungian Psychology Applied to A Separate Peace Everyone has been responsible for wrongful actions in their lives. The reason for these actions as well as your envy, lies, and insecurities is your shadow. Carl Jung’s theory of the persona includes concepts of “the ego, living with the shadow and the persona and mask one wears”(Internet Wire). In “The Shadow Effect”, Jung also describes the shadow as representing “ ‘the other side’ or ‘the dark brother’, who is an inseparable part of our psyche” (Burkard Sievers). Jung explains how for a person to deal with social acceptance and the expectations of humanity, they must conceal the part of themselves that they know won’t conform with these expectations (the shadow). People conceal this part by …show more content…
In “The Shadow Effect,” it describes how human portrayal of the persona creates a greater intensity of denial, which increases the darkness in one’s shadow. The darkening of a person's shadow can occur when the individual’s stress, hatred and envy is built up under the mask of the persona. The shadow will become externally visible through the unjustifiable actions of the person. Gene’s unjustifiable actions of intentionally jouncing finny out of the tree is evidence of his shadow overtaking his envy and causing him to maim his best friend. The persona can overtake the individual's true emotions and feelings. In “The analysis of the personality of Maggie”, it states, “If a person is too much addicted to the role he is playing, the other aspects of his personality would be excluded. He will stay in a very tense state because his strong persona is contradicted with his other weak sides in his personality” (Zhu and Han). This describes how the more a person uses their persona, the more suppressed the characteristics of their actual personality will become. The individual will become pleased with the way they present themselves to others and will eventually lose their personality completely. Gene’s persona in A Separate Peace is seen as a hardworking, A plus student. The real characteristics of Gene’s personality are never revealed as a result of the shadow only taking over in times of heated anger or …show more content…
On page 49, Gene says, “Studying! I snarled. Studying! You know, books. Work. Examinations.” Gene in this quote portrays himself to Finny as a caring student that wants to study to achieve success and better his future. He tells Finny that everytime he attends one of their “meetings” he gets a bad grade. Gene’s persona hides the true reason he works so hard in school. On page 48, Gene says, “I didn't want Finny to understand me as I understood him. And also I didn't want to let him excel me in this, even though I knew it didn't matter whether he showed me up at the tree or not.” Gene’s central reason for working so hard on his academics is to conquer his envy toward Finny and prove to himself and his peers that he is better than him. He knows that Finny will never be at his academic level and uses that as an advantage to further his ego. Gene uses his persona to portray himself as a “straight-laced” guy to cover the dark truths of his shadow. Gene’s shadow is a jealous, psychotic person whose low self esteem forces him to compete against and kill his best friend out of
When the novel starts Gene is lost and confused about his feeling towards Phineas, he is not sure if he is jealous or just looking up to Phineas. However, the moment he causes Phineas to fall off the tree he realizes his inner-self and realizes his true feelings. He realizes that it was not a little jealousy or anything else but it was hate that was building up inside him. He first realized what his true emotion was when he...
Gene resembles the shadow because he often feels jealous of Finny’s accomplishments and sees him as
He hated you for getting an A in every course but one last term. You would have had an A except for him. Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies!” (53) After this realization, Gene is bitter toward Phineas. When the chance arrives, Gene takes it.
In the beginning to the middle of the book Gene lives through Finny. "Come on,' drawled Finny from below, stop standing there showing off.' Jump!'"(Knowles 9). Finny thought of an extremely adventurous idea. He decided that he wanted to jump out of a tree into the river below. Finny also wanted the other boys that were with him to jump out of the tree. After Finny jumped he attempted to persuade Gene to follow his lead and jump out of the tree. Gene, a very conservative individual, did not even dream of ever jumping out of the tree but Finny got his way. Gene climbed the tree and jumped into the river because Finny manipulated him to. "Studying! You know, books. Work. Examinations'" (Knowles 49). Finny has come to tell Gene that one of the boys named Leper has finally decided to jump out of the tree into the river. Gene finally explodes and starts screaming at Finny. Gene tells Finny that he needs to study for the French final and that he cannot be wasting his time with a silly game. At this moment in time, Finny finally realized that Gene actually has to study in order to get good grades. Finny always thought that school for Gene came just as easily as sports did for him. When Finny realizes this he tells Gene that he has to study. "Don't move from that desk. It's straight A's for you'"(Knowles 50). All of a sudden Gene became perplexed. He could not understand that Finny was actually telling him to stay home and study.
Gene Forrester is a quiet, envious, introverted, and lonely young man. His insecurities are especially seen when Finny is around. There is a constant rivalry through Gene’s eyes between them. He always chooses to compete or argue with Phineas. The first example of his competitive personality is seen when Phineas asks him to jump out of the tree. Phineas says, “you were very good, once I shamed you into it. .. I am good for you that way. You have a tendency to back away from things otherwise.” and Gene states “you didn’t shame anybody into anything. I never backed away from anything in my life.” Gene would have never jumped off the tree if it were not for Finny. Gene depends on Finny as his security blanket. As time progresses the rivalry increases and
As the book begins, Gene is unsettled by Phineas and somewhat mystified by him. Like a legend from a western tale. As the book moves on and Finny starts to change Gene’s life, Gene appears to become very insecure and afraid of what will happen next. On page 11 it says “ ’We’d better hurry or we’ll be late for dinner,’ I said, breaking into what Finny called my ‘West Point stride’.” Which signifies the insecurity phase of Gene’s life. He was a stickler to the rules, didn’t want to be late. He was always concerned with what was right, and proper. But Phineas changes all that in him, and rather quickly too. When Finny decides to skip dinner and wrestle instead, Gene becomes confused, but goes along with his every word, and action.
Gene is the narrator and protagonist of A Separate Peace. He suffers from all PDF the regular teenager ailments; self consciousness, jealousy, an identity crisis, and uncertainty. It is obvious from the start that Gene holds a great deal of admiration for Finny. Finny is a hero, an athlete, and a God in Genes eyes. Gene admires Finny, but naturally, Finny is also the competition. Finny gains what Gene lacks. Finny has the talents for sports, better conversation and actions and could easily be described as the perfect "Devon student". Gene May get better grades, but he goes unnoticed while Finny is able to corral the boys into any activity and talk even Gene himself into breaking the rules. Gene admits to jouncing the limb of the tree on that one summer day of 1942, and he even admits his crime to Finny. It is unknowing whether this crime was subconscious, a blind impulse or consciously malevolent. The source of our facts is Gene himself which makes it even more of a rocky situation. It could be that Gene over stricken with guilt jounced the branch, or that he has imagined these antagonist thoughts which were never really t...
Finny’s innocence was corroded by the jealousy and malice of his supposed best friend, Gene. Gene at first saw Finny as a good, but very influential friend. Although, partway through the book, Gene began to despise Finny, thinking that Finny was only trying to be better than him. “That way he, the great athlete, would be way ahead of me. It was all cold trickery, it was all calculated, it was all enmity.” (53) In all actuality Finny was a great person as shown by the above paragraph. “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.” (59) Eventually this jealousy from Gene towards Finny’s perfection tried to wear away the wholeness Finny had found. This shown when Gene shook the limb of the tree. (59-60) This breaks Finny’s leg which ends, essentially, where his perfection originates from, his athletics. “Sports are finished for him, after an accident like that. Of course.” (63) Finny still retained his innocence but, it was not the same as before.
Fittingly, the single greatest expression of such knowledge is in the characterization of the protagonist Gene, and later his development. He is the premier student of Devon Academy, intelligent and studious, but a social outcast, trying to stay afloat in a school of piranhas for classmates. He is commonly described as the "cautious Protestant" with a "germ of wildness" ("A Separate Peace"), describing his innate savagery beneath the veneer of civilization. In the beginning of the story, he held great enmity for Phineas despite their friendship. Gene saw Finny first as a competing rival, neurotic and jealous like himsel...
In the book, The Power of One, the main character Peekay has a vast amount of traits that make up his peculiar personality. Three of these personality traits are resilience, maturity, and independence, and he gets each from a different life experience or person he meets. These, combined with something he called his “camouflage,” made it possible for Peekay to get through the rough patches in his life. Peekay’s personality traits show up in a different part of his life, but they all come together to help him survive in the end.
I believe our personalities make up who we are and how others perceive us at times. Personalities are our own unique qualities, that we possess as individuals. In writing this short paper, I have found that psychologists use assessments to define an individual’s personality to determine their qualities and what makes them different from other individuals. Through the Big Five Personality test, I found it difficult to define and understand an individual personality
Hermann Hesse, a German author famous especially for his novel Siddhartha, among others, was born in 1877 into a Protestant Christian family. Hesse travelled to India in 1911, excited for a spiritual Buddhist experience like his grandfather told him stories about, but was sorely disappointed by scam artists and the country’s poverty. In his later life, Hesse suffered multiple instances of trauma and loss. "During the war, Hesse's life changed drastically as his family began to fall apart. His wife showed symptoms of mental illness, while his third son became very ill. Hesse… experienced, albeit second-hand, the horrors of war. He publicly denounced the war, and in retaliation, the German press labeled him a traitor. As a result, Hesse left Germany and traveled to Lucern, Switzerland to receive Jungian psychoanalysis. He was naturalized in 1922." (World History: The Modern Era). Hesse published his novel Siddhartha in the same year. Siddhartha was clearly influenced by Jungian psychology, as the title character undergoes Jung’s process of psychoanalysis as he examines his life throughout the novel. Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha explores/dictates/is/describes/whatever a journey/voyage through the works/psychology of psychologist/doctor Carl Jung, as Siddhartha, like Hesse himself, seeks enlightenment on/and the path towards mental health.
Knowles deliberately juxtaposes Gene’s social awkwardness to Finny’s natural athleticism and charisma to suggest an imbalance of power between the two boys. Set in Devon School, described as “very athletic” (Knowles 13), Finny, “an extraordinary athlete…the best athlete in the school,” (16) establishes himself to be popular, tilting the balance of power. Stating there is no one “in this school – in this world – whom [he] could trust” (53), Knowles introduces Gene as a distrustful individual. Gene’s hesitant nature lets the animated Finny take charge of their relationship. To create power imbalance, the author purposefully creates Gene and Finny with wildly different personalities.
Gene dismisses his shadow during his first few encounters with it, quickly rejecting the darkness inside himself by conjuring up excuses for his undesirable desire. In a scene where Finny attempts to talk his way out of trouble, Gene’s shadow makes an appearance, as he believed, “this time [Finny] wasn't going to get away with it. I could feel myself becoming unexpectedly excited” (Knowles 27). The excitement of Finny getting into trouble is caused by Gene’s shadow, as he describes its presence as unexpected. Gene has become introduced to his shadow, but does not yet know the full extent of the darkness existing within himself. Shadows contain darker emotions, such as envy, anger, or hatred, that we hide from the outside world as these emotions are perceived negatively. In Gene’s shadow, jealousy rises, as he compares himself
Gene is a well-educated, athletic individual. He takes his school work seriously and keeps to himself, meaning he doesn’t favor standing out or being in the spotlight. He is a follower, especially when it comes to his best friend, Phineas. Throughout the book, he often compares himself to Phineas and talks about how perfect Finny is.