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Dialectical Journal For A Separate Peace

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Theme 1.1: Envy. In Knowles’s coming of age book, “A Separate Peace”, there are lots of mishaps that happen and the beginning of these mishaps is when one of his main characters, Gene, starts thinking malicious things about Phineas, his friend. It started out as a small inkling of envy, suddenly later on in the book, it turned into something that resembled a fractious disaster. As the chapters progress, Gene shows the readers his way of thinking towards Phineas, by describing his “unexpected excitement” (27) when Phineas was about to receive a scolding from Mr. Patch-Wither, the substitute headmaster of Devon during the summer session. Surprisingly, when Phineas (aka Finny) further explained why he wore the school tie as a belt, his illogical …show more content…

To touch on the subject again, at the end of chapter two, Gene and Finny were on the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session tree and when Gene turned around to retort something back to Phineas, Gene lost balance, and would have almost fallen and died if it wasn’t for Finny. And as previously said, Gene felt thankful but on the other hand, he blamed Phineas for almost falling off the tree, because it was Phineas that coaxed him to the tree. Skipping to the end of chapter five, Gene and Finny are both on the tree again. Finny, wanting to jump out, side by side into the lake like they did previous chapters, ventured out to the wooden rungs and held onto a thin branch. Gene – feeling bitter because he realized that “Phineas had never been jealous of me for a second... I was not the same quality as he,” (59) – took a step towards Finny, but his intention was not the same as Finny’s innocent one. Gene “jounced the limb,” (60) – on purpose – making Finny fall into the body of water unprepared. Gene, not attempting to catch Phineas before he falls is a major sign of betrayal, considering the act that Finny had done for him previously. Knowles included the look on Phineas’s face as he was falling down describing it as a face with extreme interest. The connotation of the sentence makes it seem as if Phineas was half expecting Gene to push him off the

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