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Theme of fear maceth literature essay
What is the message of Separate Peace by John Knowles
Theme of fear maceth literature essay
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As Yoda once said, "Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering." This is a dominant idea in John Knowles' A Separate Peace. The novel takes place during World War II and traces the time the main character, Gene, spends at a prep school called Devon . It is there that he meets and forms a strong love-hate relationship with a boy named Finny. The two become best friends, but Gene soon develops an intense jealousy of Finny. This is due to Gene's own insecurities, which are the fears he possesses of not being good enough. Gene carries many fears which are the root of the tragedies that later take place in the novel. In Knowles' A Separate Peace, Gene' s fear ultimately leads to suffering.
Throughout the novel, Gene possesses several fears. Gene is deeply afraid of jumping off of the tree limb. Due to peer pressure, Gene is forced to jump from the tree into a river. This task is one which Gene is not fond of and it frightens him terribly. As he is about to dive off for the first time, he is filled with abundant fear: "This tree flooded me with a sensation of alarm all the way to my tingling fingers"(8). This makes it evident that he is terrified of jumping. Despite him successfully jumping off, Gene's fear does not vanish. He in fact must suffer through it every time he jumps off: "I never got inured to the jumping. At every meeting the limb seemed higher, thinner, the deeper water harder to reach"(25). Gene clearly has a fear of heights which makes his every jump a genuine nightmare. Another one of Gene's fears is his fear of being drafted into
Almassi 2 the war. Boys who are around Gene's age group are constantly being drafted for the war. The thought of being drafted terrifies Gene after ...
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...fault of Gene. However, this time the consequences are far more tragic. While the doctor is fixing up his leg, some bone marrow gets into his blood stream and flows directly into his heart, causing his heart to stop. Gene's hate led to Finny losing his life. Finny's death is no less than a heartbreaking calamity. He was one of the truly good people in the world, who possessed no inner evil. He was crushed by the hate in the world, and his life was taken from him.
In Knowles' A Separate Peace, Gene starts with his many fears, including his insecurities which were also the root of his anger. Once he is angry, he allows that anger to grow into catastrophic levels so that he develops a huge hatred of Finny. In the end, Gene's hate leads to suffering for both Gene and Finny. Gene feels guilt for the actions he committed when he was
Works Cited
A Separate Peace
The Dangers of Fear Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worst attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point where they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous examples used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were.
Throughout the novel Gene loses his innocence and matures under the influence of Finny. Gene gradually lets go of his childish jealousy over Finny, who he believes is superior to him and feels hatred towards. He however comes to realize what Finny’s friendship holds for him and recognizes his need to be a part of Finny. Gene first gains confidence in himself and starts maturing when he refuses to lie about his rich heritage...
feels that he has to get revenge. This anger leads to Gene jouncing Finny out of the tree.
Throughout life, there is always a person who one strives to beat, be better than or rise above. Little does each of them know that in the end the two actually make each other stronger. In John Knowles' novel, A Separate Peace (1959), he addresses just this. The novel, told from Gene Forrester's point of view, is based on a friendship and rivalry between him and his friend, Finny, during World War II. The two sixteen year olds attend Devon School, a private all boys' school, in New Hampshire. Finny, a very athletically talented youngster, continually but unintentionally causes Gene to feel inferior and insignificant, producing inevitable anger and jealousy inside Gene. During their summer session in 1942, the boys form a Super Suicide Society; anyone wanting to join the group is required to jump from a specific tree into the running river below. On one particular night, Finny tears the irritated Gene away from his studies for no reason other than to make a plunge from the tree. After arriving at the river, the two creep out on one of the tree's limbs. Balancing as if they were on a tightrope, Gene gives a quick little bounce to the limb, causing Finny to plummet to the riverbank below, severely breaking his leg. No one is aware of Gene's intentional bounce of the tree limb, encouraged by his resentment toward Finny. Gene's jealous action causes Finny's life to change forever. He feels terrible about what he did but cannot bring himself to tell Finny the truth. Faced with many great challenges, Gene struggles through the remainder of the novel trying to find himself and develop into his own person. The truth about the tree incident is finally revealed shortly after Finny bre...
“Only Phineas never was afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone. Other people experienced this fearful shock somewhere, this sighting of the enemy, and so began an obsessive labor of defense, began to parry the menace they saw facing them by developing a particular frame of mind.”(Knowles 204) John Knowles, the author of A Separate Peace states this quote to explore how some people develop defense mechanisms in order to protect themselves from any harm they may endure. Gene, the novel’s protagonist feels as though his best friend Phineas is somehow out to get him. However, Finny’s perception of his friend was utterly different from Gene’s perspective. In fact, Finny acts as a foil for Gene throughout the story, carrying a completely different outlook on things. Gene’s savage nature allows him to identify the evil within people when Finny simply acknowledges the positive traits in his friends, disregarding the concept of wickedness as a whole. Through Gene and Finny’s friendship, John Knowles illustrates the significance of how one has the ability to perceive others.
Chapter 7: After the Fall also claims that Gene “wants to become what Finny was as a means to escape from himself”, however, the novel presents evidence that Finny was the one who tried to become Gene. The literary analysis claims Gene’s signing up for extracurricular activities and his wearing of Finny’s shirt suggest that Gene is
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...
one way Gene is affected is that he becomes jealous of him and thinks that he’s trying to ruin his
Fear influences the way humans react and the actions that transpire. Some embrace the feeling of fear; others try to overcome obstacles that fear creates. Sometimes, fear stimulates a strong response of self-isolation to shield one’s mind from accepting emotion. The response, however, can manifest into an extreme nature, creating the personality that Gilbert Grape exhibits. Peter Hedges clearly communicates the fact that Gilbert underwent a transformation and his personality reflects the change. The transformation not only causes Gilbert to become conflicted with expressing feelings, but he fears the guilt of doing so as well. Gilbert struggles with the family controlling the opinions, emotions and actions he makes. Peter Hedges illustrates the crippling nature of fear in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Knowles further manipulates Finny and Gene’s relationship in their escapades together. At the beach, Finny shares his inner emotions with Gene, an act likened to “the next thing to suicide” (48). Surprised, Gene attempts to share his own feelings, but hesitates and does not follow through. Knowles uses Gene’s hesitant, distrusting nature, to suggest dishonesty in his relationship with Finny. In the scene where Finny saves Gene from falling out of the tree, Knowles continues to imply power disparity. Realizing that “Finny had practically saved [his] life” (32), Gene feels personal debt to Finny. This widens the power gap even further ...
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.
Although it starts after half the book is finished, one of the major examples of denying the truth in the novel is Finny denying the reality of the war. Though it is disclosed at the end that Finny knew all along about the war, he succeeds, after a little time, in making Gene truly believe in the non-existence of the war (although Gene claims that he did not really believe the story, his behavior around his classmates and his actions say otherwise). The first result we see of this denial is Finny’s confession of his bitterness towards the world because of his loss. This destroys the image we have of Finny as a “perfect” person because it shows that he blames the world for his accident. It also stuns Gene so much that he begins to do pull-ups, even though he has never done even ten before. With Finny’s verbal help, Gene manages to do thirty. This solidifies the friendship between them. After this moment, Finny decides to take Gene into his confidence and tells him he wanted to go to the 1944 Olympics, but that Gene will have to go instead, and goes on to start training Gene. Finally, after many mornings of hard training, Gene finally “[finds] his rhythm”. Superficially, it can be said that due to Finny’s ruse about the war, Gene became very...
The novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, is the coming of age story of Gene Forrester. This novel is a flashback to the year 1943, when Gene is attending Devon School during his senior year and the summer before it. "Gene's youth and inexperience make him ill-equipped to deal with situations that require maturity" (Overview: A Separate Peace 2). However, Gene is a follower of Finny and therefore gains experiences that provoke his development into adulthood. Some of these experiences include: breaking Finny's leg, training for the 1944 Olympics, and killing Finny. Through these three experiences Gene is forced to grow out of his childish-self and become a man.
In the words of Bertrand Russell, “Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom” (Russell). Fear causes many problems in our lives. Fear influences many of a person’s actions and decisions. However, people usually regret the decisions or actions they made out of fear. Also, these actions and decisions can cause problems for those people in their future. Fear is a harmful emotion, for it clouds people’s judgement, disables them from taking action, and causes them to make decisions that they will regret later.
In "A Separate Peace" many characteristics of becoming a man can be seen. For example, as the novel progresses, so does Gene's maturity. Gene's first seen in the novel as a boy, not yet brought on by nature, but as one gets deeper into the novel, one sees change; Gene embarks on life change that all men journey through once in their life. Gene begins to see his life and others from a totally new standpoint, as though even from a newer perspective. In Chapter two and chapter three, Gene, develops a sheer envy for Finny, and acknowledges it as the truth. He is extremely envious of the methods in which Finny uses to escape his unusual actions and his popularity. He embeds himself in a pool of self-assurance, by repeatedly telling himself over and over again that having