Friendship in John Knowles' A Separate Peace

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In life, as well in books there can be a lot of friendship going on; in some cases there can be bad friendships and there can be good friendships. In A Separate Peace Gene, in my opinion, Gene is not a good friend. In Catcher in the Rye Holden, in my opinion, is also not a good friend. I think that Holden and Gene are not good friends to other people and do not really know how to keep a friendship, because even though they both have friends, they both still discern their friends in bad ways or think bad things about them; because the person or friend has done something bad towards them or because they feel insecure towards the person or the situation that they are in.

In the book A Separate Peace Gene has some friends at Devon, but he has one best friend, Phineas (Finny), and Gene really gets a long with him; but Gene has a different point of view of Finny than everybody else at Devon. Gene and Finny are best friends but in their relationship Gene gets the wrong impression of Finny. “‘Come on, lets go. We’ve got to be there. You never know, maybe he will do it this time.’ Oh for God sake.’ I slammed the French book. ‘What’s the matter?’ What a performance! His face was completely questioning and candid” (Knowles 57). In this quote Gene thinks that Finny is trying to take him away from his studies and is trying to get ahead of him. In my opinion If Gene was really a good friend he would have never had these thoughts about Finny or a least Gene would have known that’s how Finny acts. In the same sense Holden does the same thing to the people that care or like him as a friend.

Holden, the main character, in the book Catcher in the Rye has friends but really does not know how to understand how they act towards him. Holden judges a person before he really gets to know what they are trying to do; he calls the people that are not his close friends/ teachers, Phonies. “I didn’t feel like going into the whole thing with him. He wouldn’t have understood it anyway. It wasn’t up his alley at all. One of the biggest reasons I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies.

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