Character Analysis: A Separate Peace

“The most logical thing a solider escapes from is danger, death, the enemy.” Everyone goes through a point in their life where they go to war with themselves. When you are the solider and the enemy you cannot escape from yourself, but you can go for the wrong enemy; such as Gene does. Gene admires and resents his best friend, Phineas, but his resentment takes over and causes him to commit terrible actions towards Phineas. Gene admires Phineas to the point of no return. He feels as if Phineas was an extraordinary person and that it was a compliment for him to pick him, Gene, as a best friend. Being the extraordinary person that Phineas was to Gene he was willing to do many things for Phineas. “Going there risked expulsion, destroyed the studying

Envy was the first thing that Gene felt towards Phineas. The feeling of envy came because no matter what rule Phineas broke he could always weasel himself out any punishment. Being the rule follower Gene was this bothered him because he followed the rules so he would not get in trouble, but Phineas could disobey every rule in the book and never have a consequence. “I was beginning to see Phineas could get away with anything.” But this envious feeling soon turned into bitterness because Gene as if it is unfair that Phineas does not get caught and a punishment for all the lies he tells. “This time he wasn’t going to get away with it. I could feel myself becoming unexpectedly excited at that.” These emotions start to boil inside of Gene, which causes him to make false accusations. One of these false accusations is how he thinks Phineas is trying to sabotage his academic standing with all of the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session. But later on Gene realizes that Phineas’ intentions were always pure and he never meant to interfere with Gene’s studying. When Gene finds this out he is even more angered. All these emotions build up into his moment of resentment while they are on the tree, which causes him to jounce the limb so Phineas will fall. All the feeling Gene was struggling with pestered inside of him until eventually these