ipl-logo

Jealousy In John Knowles A Separate Peace

623 Words3 Pages

Jealousy doesn’t appear out of the blue. It doesn’t just show up one day. Jealousy is like a cloud. It builds up over time, and eventually releases onto everyone standing in its way, just like in the book, written by John Knowles, A Separate Peace. The three main characters involved with jealousy are Gene, Finny, and Brinker. Every riveting scene of jealousy, changes the mood of the book completely. Jealousy causes friendships to be destroyed, and hatreds to form in this novel.
The first scene of jealousy to be discussed, is the scene where Gene jounced the limb of the tree, causing Finny to fall out of the tree, where Finny ended up with a broken leg. Any reader would basically have to think that Gene jounced the limb because his jealousy of Finny. Finny was one of those kids that was a rebel, but could talk his way out of everything. The “Houdini” of getting in trouble! Gene was obviously jealous of this, like everyone. But, the kicker is when the reader finds out that Gene thought that Finny was trying to sabotage him because he was jealous of Gene’s academic abilities. Finny would never sabotage Gene. Gene’s jealousy ruined Finny’s life because Finny won’t ever be able to do what he loves again. In the end, Finny will not be able to compete in the 1944 Olympics and Gene will live with the terrible burden of …show more content…

Basically, ever since Finny broke his leg, he has never been wanted or accepted by any regiment of the army. Since Finny is not able to fight, he had begun to start telling himself that the war was just a joke, made up by fat, old men. These actions by Finny were sparked by jealousy, and the author did this to stir empathy of the story. If you were in Finny’s shoes, wouldn 't you probably think the same way? To have this very important war raging on, and you are not physically capable to fight for your own country? I know for a fact that I would think like

Open Document