William Penn once said, "The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves". At some point in everyone's life, one will experience jealousy. Jealousy effects enemies, families, and even best friends, and it often results in permanent damage to even the strongest relationships. Gene Forrester learns this the hard way. His envy of Phineas causes him to hurt both Finny and himself. Gene's jealousy takes over his life and changes how he acts throughout the novel. The accident transforms the root of Gene’s jealousy from destructive to obsessive because of Finny’s athleticism, his ease at being able to escape blame, and his overall superior personality.
Before the accident, Gene always tries to compete with Finny, and his jealousy for Finny’s athletic ability leads to the destruction of their friendship. Gene resents how Finny is naturally talented. His resentment causes him to be offended by the comments Finny makes questioning how Gene needs to study to do as well as he is able to do in school. Gene says, “It seemed that he had made some kind of a parallel between my studies and his sports. He probably thought anything you were good at came without effort” (58 Knowles). Gene puts a lot of effort in to his academic ability, and in return it far exceeds Finny's. When Finny makes an inquiry to Gene about needing to study, it lessens Gene’s talent and renders it substandard to Finny’s athleticism because his talents requires no effort. Because Gene aims to be greater than Finny, this angers him immensely. These feelings lead him to a path of animosity towards Finny causing Gene to want to hurt him. Before the accident, Gene is resentful of Finny’s ignorance towards the down side of sport – losing: “Finny...
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...gry with Finny, but he seems to still be jealous of his legacy. The repetition of Phineas’ name emphasizes how important Finny was to Gene and the impact Finny had on Devon.
Gene takes out his jealousy for Finny's talents and likable personality in a malicious way. His actions cause him to want to change his identity to be like Finny in order to escape what he has done. A friendship with a little competition is normal, but when it causes someone to hurt their friend or try to be their friend, it becomes unhealthy. Many people do not realize the effect that jealousy has on their life. Jealousy causes people to treat others horribly. People with jealous relationships should find a way to get their feelings out in a healthy outlet to avoid making regretful choices in moments of anger. When someone is jealous they end up hurting others, but mostly themselves.
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...
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.
In the story, Finny created a counterpart between his athleticism and Gene’s academic abilities. Since sports came easy to Finny, he assumed that Gene was naturally intelligent and smart. Finny eventually figured out that this was not true and that his assumptions were incorrect; “‘Oh for God sake! You don’t know what I’m talking about. No, of course not. Not you…’ ‘I didn’t know you needed to study,’ he said simply, ‘I didn’t think you ever did. I thought it just came to you.’ It seemed that he had made some kind of parallel between my studies and his sports. He probably thought anything you were good at came without effort” (Knowles 57-58). Finny was unable to comprehend that some skills do not come naturally to people. Devoted friendships are a result of having an appreciation for each other. Finny and Gene did not have this nor did they truly know each other very well. A lack of understanding between the two of them provoked various disputes throughout the novel. If Gene and Finny were truly friends, misunderstandings would not have occurred since they would have acknowledged their
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
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
Although Gene hurt Finny, he never questions Gene's loyalty and friendship. Showing how true friends will always believe and trust each other. During a school
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.
explains to us that from now on you have to take on jealousy as well.
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.
It was portrayed the most throughout the movie on both Edward and Jim. There are two distinct types of jealousy, reactive and suspicious. Reactive jealousy was considered as a good behavior and preferred by researchers like Attridge (2013). In the movie, Jim displayed multiple reactive jealousy towards Edward after he found out that Kim was in love with Edward. According to Swami et at., (2012), formation of jealousy is high when the perception of a partner’s value was ranked higher than their own. Jim thought that it was a waste for Kim to get together with Edward because she is out of his league. This is understandable as Jim and Kim was lovers and Jim was probably under the bias for love is blind. Besides that, the reactive jealousy that Jim had towards Edward was because he felt the physical threat of Edward taking Kim away from him. This lead to an argument that turned into a fist fight and ended with one party dead. Besides that, Jim and Kim were probably not lovers for long as Attridge (2013) argued that the longer you are in a relationship, the less suspicion you have on your partner’s infidelity. Peg and Bill portrayed that flawlessly as Bill was never concerned about Peg cheating on him even though she was spending a lot of time attending to Edward and helping him whenever he needs a helping hand. The portrayal of the relationship between Peg and Bill also supported the result from Acevedo
Analysis: This quote is based on the theme of envy. It is clear that Gene feels that Phineas can get away with anything. The reader can tell that Gene hate him because of this.
a best friend like Finny is an accolade and he should see it as an achievement. However, this transparent excuse of Gene's maturity at this point, portrays a very young, foolish, and selfish young man. "It was hypnotism. I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn't help envying that a little, which was perfectly normal."(Knowles p. 25) Here we see Gene as a simply confused young man who doesn't know the real value of friendship, and can't refuse a feeling of envy towards his so called "best friend.
Thesis 2: Imagination allowed Pi to survive by keeping him sane, protecting him and lastly to acquire the traits of telling a beautiful story.