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Summary Of A Separate Peace By John Knowles

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In John Knowles A Separate Peace he writes about the transition from childhood to adolescence.In this coming of age novel taking place in the 1950’s two teenage boys Finny and Gene form a relationship based on fear and adventure. The two opposite teens, finny a outgoing basically perfect teen and gene being a lesser perfect balances out the relationship between the two.The fact that they are somewhat minor opposites aren’t the only thing that brings the two together.Finny’s fear of anything bad or evil and gene’s fear of hitting rock bottom forms a relationship between the two teens which sets the stage for us all. Finny’s fear of anything bad or evil is shown all throughout the book. He has this thing where he believes everything is good that everything is fine and he finds the good in people. He refuses to see the bad in others . Gene explains to Finny it was him who caused him to fall off the branch Finny argues “ Of course you didn’t …”(70). You then see that finny does not want to see the truth of the matter that Gene didn’t have his best interest at hand.He also doesn’t want to believe there really is a war going on he argues to gene” Do you …show more content…

After a game of blitzball Gene and Finny go back to the dorm and gene begins to study finny then comments “ You work too hard”(51) and “ Nobody is surer of graduating..”(51). Showing that he works his butt off to make it to the top to be above everyone when specifically he wants to be above finny. His jealousy is shown a lot throughout the story but in a minor way such as when he hopes finny will get caught when he uses the devon school tie as a belt gene is sure “ this time he wasn’t..”(27).Gene eventually realizes finny gets away with everything and makes him furious. Events such as those further lead to the biggest event when he pushed Finny off the branch of the

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