A Separate Peace Literary Analysis Assignment Even the strongest people cry sometimes. John Knowles, the author of, A Separate Peace, writes about the life at Devon, an all boys sleep away school in New Hampshire. Gene Forrester befriends Phineas, and soon after the two establish the, “Suicide Society,” where each member must jump from the glorious tree into the river. Over time, Gene begins to envy Finny because of his physical capabilities, and in the end, Gene pushes Finny off the tree, and Phineas's leg shatters, limiting his physical capabilities. As the story proceeds, Gene must live with the guilt of Finny permanently disabled, knowing he had done it purposely, while Finny believes it was done accidentally. Finny soon returns to Devon, and slips on marble stairs, which ultimately results in his bone marrow seeping into the blood and to his heart killing him. …show more content…
Throughout the book, Gene must live with the feeling of pushing Phineas out of the tree and permanently disabling him. Gene is outside Phineas’s window of the Infirmary when Gene shows sympathetic emotion for the first time. “...I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. I put my hand over my mouth; then I tried to stop my mouth with my fist; if I couldn’t get control of this laughing they would hear me in the room. I was laughing so hard it hurt my stomach and I could feel my face getting more and more flushed; I dug my teeth into my fist to try to gain control and then I noticed that there were tears all over my hand.” (Knowles 183-184). On a literal level, this passage explains how Gene was thinking of Finny inappropriately saying things to Dr.Stanpole and Miss. Windbag. In
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
feels that he has to get revenge. This anger leads to Gene jouncing Finny out of the tree.
Gene is much like Cain and because he is like Cain he has jealousy and hatred against Phineas who is Abel. When Gene wakes up at sunrise on the beach, while Finny is still sleeping. Gene realizes that he has an important exam and it will take him a long time to get back to Devon. He makes it back in time to Devon, but fails the
First, I believe that Gene and Finny were not sincerely friends throughout the novel due to their relationship being driven by competitiveness. Along with the competitive atmosphere came jealously, envy and enmity. Gene created a rivalry between him and Finny. Since Finny was
His focus upon the importance of individuality is a constant throughout the novel and is displayed through Gene’s hatred toward Finny at the beginning of the novel only because he was more athletic than he was. (Knowles 43). Finny has always been a breaker of rules-game rules, school rules, the rules of a society at war that say that no one should be having fun now. But Gene's desire to break the boundaries of their separate human identities is finally still more radical. The reader might not think Finny's death is Gene's fault, but this desire to absorb his friend completely seems to require either Finny's actual death, which of course occurs, or the death of all difference between them, which one will argue also occurs (McGavran).Though Knowles is (to us) curiously coy in describing the death of Finny, even italicizing it as ‘that’, he considers it extremely important because of its concentration on pure pleasure.” This proves that Knowles is clearly focusing on the pleasures of emotion and feelings of Gene. Emotion and all other feeling is basically nonexistent in Gene, which is a clear warning to people today that that lust is not the answers to solving your problems even if it means losing someone you truly love and care
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion. It is harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) A Separate Peace (1959) written by John Knowles, expresses the true struggle to respect ones individuality. In 1942 at a private school in New Hampshire Gene Forrester became good friends with his roommate, Finny. He envies Finny for his great Athletic ability. In spite of the envy, Gene and Finny do everything together and one day for fun they decide to jump out of a tree into the river. After that they form the Super Suicide Society, the first time they jumped being their reason for formation. During one of their meetings they decide to jump off at the same time. When they get up on the limb Gene bounces it and Finny falls on the bank. He shatters the bones in his leg and will never again play sports. Nobody realizes that Gene deliberately made Finny lose his balance. Because of the accident Gene does not play sports either and continues being friends with Finny. One night, some of the other guys from Devon School woke Gene and Finny up in the middle of the night. They are suspicious of the "accident." They conduct a trial to blame Gene for what has happened to Finny. Eventually Finny gets upset in the midst of argument and runs out. He ends up tripping and falling down the stairs, and breaking his healed leg allover again. It was a cleaner break this time but they still have to set it. Gene confesses to Finny that he bounced him out of the tree. While setting the break there are complications and Finny dies. Gene learns that he is his own person and now that Finny is gone he can finally be content with himself. In the beginning Gene feels inferior to Finny.
Gene feels both love and hate for his best friend, Phineas, worshipping and resenting Phineas’s athletic and moral superiorities. Gene simply cannot handle the fact that Finny is so perfect. As he puts it, "Phineas could get away with anything” (Knowles 18). Gene then creates an internal rivalry with Finny, convincing himself that Finny is deliberately attempting to ruin his schoolwork. Internal conflict Gene deals with reaches its maximum when Finny proposes a “double jump”(19) from the tree.
Finny is a rebellious, charming, and very athletic boy. His charisma comes from his ability to make up rules and ideas on the spot and being able to get out of any trouble which is magnetic to the other boys at Devon. Most of the teachers admired Phineas because he was the poster boy of boys not yet affected by the war as mentioned by Gene when he says " But there was another reason. I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen. [...] We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives that were not bound up with destruction,". (Knowles 24) While the war rages on the boys of the school begin to adjust to their fates, showing their more negative emotions such as hatred for the enemy. Gene believed that everyone chose their enemy at some point, hated at some point. But what made Finny different was that he never did. Phineas in all his actions was good intentioned. He saw the world as a giant playground. The game he invented, Blitz Ball, is a game where no one actually wins or loses. Blitz Ball's whole idea is enjoying the pure fun of the game and not the outcome which shows who Finny really is as a person. He sees the goodness in everyone and expects that everyone else does the same. (Which can also cause him to look arrogant and selfish at times which Finny never becomes fully aware of.) This blind eye to evil leads to Finny's downfall (literally) as he doesn't realize the burdens Gene holds
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...
A Separate Peace by John Knowles shows that Gene, Finny, and Leper set up Maginot Lines that are ineffective and eventually lead to their own destruction.
This quote shows their friendship. Gene didn’t understand why Finny talked him into things that he knew he shouldn't have done. Finny influenced Gene. This wasn't necessarily a good thing. Sometimes Finny helped Gene overcome his fears and help him become more social. But sometimes, it was a bad thing, like jumping from the tree. Much of his hesitation over jumping has less to do with a fear of dying than a fear of subordination, of blindly following Finny's desires
Insidiously and pervasively, Gene's original doubt creeps into his mind while at the beach, when Finny confesses that Gene is his best pal, yet Gene's hesitation holds him back, stating that “perhaps [he] was stopped by the level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth” (50). By pondering his motivations, Gene reveals that he truly does not believe that Finny considers him his best friend; Gene doubts Finny because he believes that hate forms the cornerstone of the relationship, which in turn leaves no room for love. Instead, Gene believes the confession of friendship serves the purpose of disillusioning him, that, as a conniver, Finny wants Gene to falsely trust him. Through a lack of communication, neither boy truly knows where they stand as a friendship based on trust and mutual affection fosters no home for envy, and yet Gene believes that Finny is his adversary. Finally, Gene ponders how he “might have asked, 'Who are you then?'” while realizing that Finny cares more about him than the fake rivalry; as Finny's personality seems to suddenly veer away from competitive, Gene feels he “was facing a total stranger” (50). Because Finny fears destroying the friendship by addressing its problems, he never empathizes with Gene and therefore does not see Gene's deluded misinterpretation of the association or the hatred that he fosters towards Phineas. Finny throws Gene off guard as he expressed his true feelings because, fed by doubt, Gene does not believe that Finny truly cares for him. Again, Gene's fears escape his mind as he exclaims “to drag me down too!” (57) when Finny talks of how he could have reached out to Gene in the moments before his fall. In his mind, Gene molds Phineas into a resentful person, so he automatically assumes the worst with Finny's intentions. Like an animal of prey, Gene retreats suddenly when
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 begins to realize Finny is not above him, and rather thinks to himself, “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. . . .
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.