John Knowles A Separate Peace

Finny survives the fall, but, will never be able to play sports again. Finny’s friend Brinker, who is under the suspicion Gene caused the accident, calls a fake trial. He spits hostile questions at Gene, asking him if he did it. This overwhelms Finny who walks out. On his walk out Finny falls down the stairs, breaking his leg again, this time it was only a clean break.

When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend. In the novel A Separate Peace there is a question that the reader thinks about, is Gene evil. In the book, Gene has this friend named Finny. Finny doesn't realize that Gene is jealous of how good he is at sports. One day they were both on a tree and Gene shakes the branch and Finny falls and breaks his leg.

In A Separate Peace Phineas (Finny) and Gene become a model of codependency. At the start of A Separate Peace Gene expresses envy and resentment towards Finny. Finny’s physical abilities in sports lead Gene to feel it necessary to accentuate his intellectual abilities in school. Gene’s need quickly turns into a one sided competition against Finny, until Finny falls out of a tree breaking his leg, exposing Gene’s darker feelings towards his best friend. Now rather than envy fueling Finny and Gene’s relationship, it quickly becomes fueled by their codependency on each other.

Doodle always wanted a brother who will care for him and keep him safe. At the end of the story deceitfulness was shown when brother left Doodle alone in a storm. Brother also mislead Doodle, through having him done things he was not capable of doing. Being deceitful can sometimes break a good relationship or lead to a lot of worse things. Not only did brother mislead Doodle, but he was untruthful to Doodle.

While the world felt like it was changing, it was in fact staying the same. Gene himself, however, continued to grow and so even though the school stayed the same it seemed to Gene like it had changed: now the "giants of his childhood" didn't seem like giants at all. Critics that looked at Knowles’ work were compelled to analyze the importance of the school as a setting that influenced the lives of the children that lived there. “Such a school is a place for education and growth. Here it also represents the last place of freedom and safety for the boys, guarding their last days of childhood and standing as ‘the tame fringe of the last and greatest wilderness,’ adulthood”(Alton).

For Example, one of Gene’s weaknesses is that he is constantly thinking everyone is out to get him, so he does things that he will later regret, “I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb” (60). This quote shows that Gene will do things because of jealousy, frustration, or regret. This also shows Gene’s weakness because before this Finny told Gene that he should study instead of go to the tree yet Gene decided to go to the tree and kept in mind that Finny was out to get him. Another example of Gene’s weaknesses is that he never says what he wants to say, so when Finny asked Gene if he would go with Finny to the beach for the night, Gene wanted to say no so bad and yet he says, “‘All right’, I said” (46). This shows that Gene’s subconscious will take over and say things that he thinks that other people will want to hear.

When the British were going through Redding, they took twelve people, but released nine of them. Jerry was sadly one of the three taken. Taking a boy and releasing someone who is of more threat to them is very unreasonable. Tim was very saddened and was angered at the British for it as he thought the British were people he could support at the time. He had lots of fun with Jerry fishing and climbing trees, but he expected to be friends with him for longer.

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.

The fact that the men now intend to shoot each other shows how the feud has corrupted their ambition and actions. Despite Ulrich and Georg both being armed with the intent to shoot the men are faced with another obstacle, “[a] falling beech tree had thundered down on them” (Saki Online). The tree immobilizes the men, and in pinning them, prevents either man from using his rifle to murder the other. This event shows the random power of nature, and how it doesn’t abide by man’s feuds or allegiances. On the other hand, nature’s perfect timing—felling the tree just as the two men round it and see each other—might suggest some sort of divine order, one in which nature teaches the two men a lesson about their limited power.

He was reckless when it came to how his friends and family would react when he left because their emotions didn’t seem to matter to him when he made the decision to leave them. His narcissism, however, did not show solely through his recklessness with the feelings of others, but also through how unprepared he was. His stubbornness stopped him from accepting help, and his ignorance prevented him from realizing what he needed to do to survive. Chris’s decision to leave was his equivalent to Evel Knievel’s decision to try to jump over a box filled with rattlesnakes and lions. With that stunt, Knievel had put others at risk for the sake of his own personal goal: money and

Gene begins to take all of Finny’s actions as deliberate sabotages because his envy was controlling him. Gene seemed like a weak character because of his jealousy. It made him seem like he wasn’t as good as Finny or that he was lacking personality or talent. Once the realization came to Gene that Finny indeed did not feel anything but love for him, everything changed. This is when all of the mixed emotions surfaced.

A Separate Peace Wars are cruel, ruthless, and catastrophic. Lives are destroyed, and families are ripped apart. People are turned against each other, and seek to extinguish one another. “Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history” (Chris Hedges, New York Times). In John Knowles, A Separate Peace, Gene Forrester, a foolish teenager, experiences his own war; a clash between friendship and insecurities.

When most people think of envy, they think of a competition that pushes someone to improve themselves to be like another person. While it is true that envy can definitely have a positive impact, in A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the reality of envy is displayed when Gene hurts his best friend Finny. The overpowering feeling can take over a person and bring them suspicion that can cause them to commit poor actions leaving them damaged and changed forever. The first place we see this in the book is when Gene starts suspecting Finny of planning a master scheme to wreck his academic success.

Point: Leper is like a blender because he is all mixed up. Evidence: After Gene’s trip to see Leper he is fully convinced he has become crazy after the frequent crying and the absurd talk between the two characters. Sadly Gene finally admits it and confirms when Brinker says “I’ll bet he cracked up, didn’t he? That’s what happened.” referring to Leper.

Within the pages of A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the main character Gene goes through a multitude of changes; in his life and in his being. Living at Devon, an all-boys private school in scenic New England, gives his changes even less room to grow and adapt in such a secluded environment. At the center of these dramatic changes is his relationship with his closest friend Finny. A tipping point in this relationship is when Gene makes the decision to “jounce the limb” of the tree he and Finny are standing on, causing Finny to fall and cripple himself.