Identity In John Knowles A Separate Peace

In John Knowles, fictional novel, A Separate Peace, he uses internal conflict to ensure the reader’s understanding of a true friendship. Gene brings Finny’s suitcase to the infirmary, and the boys finally talk about the accident. Finny is an emotional mess and begins to cry. He asks Gene, “It was just some blind impulse you had in the tree there, you didn’t know what you were doing. Was that it” (191)? Finny is so hurt because he cannot believe that Gene would deliberately hurt him. Finny tells Gene that he understands that Gene acted without really thinking, and Finny forgives Gene. This shows the reader the true personality of Finny. He is kind, carefree, reckless, real, and loves unconditionally. He cannot accept that anyone close to

He explained, “I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn’t help envying him that a little, which was perfectly normal. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little” (Knowles 25). Not only is he admitting to the bitterness toward his friend, but he is also being ignorant for not thinking that it is wrong. This “bitterness” will soon turned into something as bad as hostility later on. For instance, when Finny uses his tie for a belt, Gene starts to feel happy because he thinks that there is no way he will “get away with it” this time. However, Finny does get away with it, and Gene confesses to feel a little stab of disappointment (Knowles 28). Because Gene is so envious of Finny, he starts to act like him. A great example of this is when the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session is created by Finny. Gene starts to attend to every meeting because “otherwise I would have lost face with Phineas, and that would have been unthinkable” (Knowles 34). Here, it is evident that Gene lives on Finny’s approval. He is always trying to please him because he sees him as someone greater than himself. Even when he has to study for French, he still goes to the meeting even

Finny wore a pink shirt and used the Devon School tie as his belt to the traditional term tea for the Upper Middle class. Mrs. Patch-Withers noticed and Finny quickly came up with a convincing story to possibly get himself out of trouble. Gene thinks Finny will be busted and reacts by saying, “I could feel myself becoming unexpectedly excited at that” (Knowles 12). This quote shows the beginning of the envy Gene feels toward Finny. Gene is somewhat looking forward to the possibility of Finny getting in trouble for the first time. Gene is secretly jealous of the charm that Finny possesses, and he wants something to go wrong for Finny. Throughout the novel he shows a range of emotions toward Finny and this effects their friendship. He is dynamic,

“Our minds are a battle ground between good and bad ideas; we are whatever side wins the battle” Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom. The struggle between good and evil is found universally. In the novel A Separate Peace, Gene Forrester struggles between his own inner good and evil. Gene's actions often reflect his feelings, leading him to trouble, giving the illusion that Gene is filled with more evil than good. However, Gene's goodness can be found even through dark times. Inherent evil does not lie in Gene Forrester because he desires to be the best he can be, he feels guilt, and matures from adolescence to adulthood.

Friendship is very important in this story. Friendship is very important for a person’s well-being. In this book titled A Separate Peace by John Knowles the reader learns a lot about friendship in this book. Gene and Finny are the main characters in this story, they teach you a lot about their friendship. Finny and Gene’s friendship can be described by their rivalry and loyalty, betrayal and guilt, and confession and forgiveness.

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, tells a story of a 16-year-old boy, Gene Forrester and his various feelings that he harbors for his gifted best friend, Phineas. Throughout the novel, Gene is constantly living in the shadow of Phineas in which he grows to breed resentment, envy, and even hate. The juxtaposition Gene Forrester is caught up in is dealing with a love and hate relationship that causes him to enmesh in personal misgivings. Thus, people can be their own worst enemy if they don't learn to accept who they are. For in striving to be that, it can be said that insecurity is an invisible weapon that oftentimes kills our self-esteem.

In John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, the main character, Gene Forrester, undergoes a traumatic journey to develop the aspects necessary for coping through adulthood. This novel is a flashback to the year of 1942, when Gene attends his final year at Devon High School, in New Hampshire. Although Gene appears to be Finny’s best friend, he follows in Finny’s steps so that his personality clones to be like Finny’s. Finny exposes new experiences that provoke Gene’s development into adulthood. As Gene engages in new experiences, he soon realizes that he envies Finny’s abilities. Gene comes of age through his understanding of the difficult challenges in his youth.

The story “A Separate Peace”, written by John Knowles, was written at the time and takes place during World War II when battles and conflicts amongst nations were evident. Each nation involved struggled and fought their hardest in order to satisfy the good of their nation. Not only is the setting in the story taking place during this time of quarrel, the story also demonstrates areas of self-conflict and an internal battle throughout. The characters in “A Separate Peace”, are described as experiencing this self-conflicting, internal battle. Gene (also the narrator) is specifically depicted as he goes through his battle in life. Gene’s relationship with his “best friend” Phineas describes how the relationship resulted in the killing of Gene's enemy, his own youth, and innocence. Gene is plainly described in the novel as envious of Finny, he is also depicted as the position of much hatred and dismay by his peers. Therefore, the fact that Gene kills his own youth is likely considering Finny’s success, Gene’s jealousy towards

Gene says that, “I was beginning to see that he could get away with anything. I couldn’t help envying him a little…” (Knowles 25). Gene then tries to justify his envious feelings towards Finny by explaining that, “There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little.” However, this envy turns into more of a jealousy and Gene starts to see Finny as more of competition, rather than a friend. Everything Finny does, Genes starts to see as competition and rivalry. At one point Gene has a false realization that, “It was all cold trickery, it was all calculated, it was all enmity...We were even after all, even in enmity. The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all” (Knowles 54). However, Gene was wrong. He only realizes this later on when Finny is confused by Gene’s hostility towards him. After a short dispute Gene thinks to himself “Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he” (Knowles 59). He becomes aware, after some thought, that, “...I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved. And if it wasn’t there, as for example with Phineas, then I put it there myself” (Knowles 101). This unnecessary conflict causes tension and hostility between Finny and Gene, resulting in Gene knocking Finny out of the tree and breaking his

Gene believes that Finny and he hate each other, until he realizes Finny’s pureness, which Gene can not stand. At first, Gene believes that Finny wants to exceed him, and that the two are rivals. Everyone at Devon likes Finny. The teachers adore him, the students look up to him, the athletes aspire

John Knowles, author of A Separate Peace, uses both character development and setting to support his decision in selecting the title. He uses the main characters of Gene and Phineas (Finny) and their troubled yet deeply bonded friendship as a way to illustrate the separate peace that takes place both within the boys themselves and in the friendship that is built between the two. Knowles also uses the setting of the novel to demonstrate the vast difference between the peaceful Devon School grounds and the war raging outside of the school’s walls. The title, A Separate Peace, as chosen by the author is symbolic of the main characters, Finny and Gene’s, struggle to find peace within themselves and with each other while set in a place that significantly contrasts the events of the real world.

Gene comes to discover that all along Phineas is the kind of person he wishes he could be. After his death, Gene notes that Phineas “was never afraid” and that only “he never hated anyone” (Knowles 204). Phineas is the only one that did not create his own inner-demons. While every other student and teacher Gene knew had the same made-up enemies and the same dark nature, Phineas stood out as someone different, someone apart from the crowd. His death is the exemplification of his own good natured character. Phineas, as the only person who never saw an enemy at the frontier, could not live in a time of war. He could not live while being innocent when the innocence of all his friends was stripped away. Knowles uses Phineas’ character to show how someone that could never hate anyone could never live in a time where hatred was a part of everyone’s lives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that, “envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide.” (370). John Knowles’ A Separate Peace is set during World War I at Devon School, a boarding school for boys. The book centers on Gene Forrester, a student at Devon, who could be described as an intelligent, but jealous, conformist. A Separate Peace illustrates Gene’s envy and imitation of his friend, Finny, and how it affects himself and his relationship with Finny, and also how Gene eventually finds peace.

An identity can be defined as who a person is inside and out. Knowles makes the vision the reader grasps of every character sharp and in focus. A Separate peace goes in depth to every character to give them a specific identity. Throughout the book Knowles brings up key qualities of each character to make the situation different. As a reader follows the story the identity of the character develops further and further. By doing this the author leaves the reader always wanting

Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affects him in many ways. He starts to believe he was meant to become a part of Finny. After Finny broke his leg from falling out of a tree, he tells Gene that he must play sports for him. Gene then thinks to himself “and I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become part of Phineas,” (Knowles 85). Since Finny cannot play sports anymore because of his broken leg, he tells Gene that he has to do it for him. Gene realizes that this is his destiny; to become an extension of Phineas. Another way he is affected is that he starts to lose his own ways by copying Finny. When Finny was in the hospital wing of the school, Gene put his clothes on and said “that I would never stumble through the confessions