The first major scene with loss of innocence in the story is when Gene shakes the tree limb and this causes Finny to fall from the tree and shatter his leg, ruining his future for sports, fighting in the war, and even walking correctly. In the scene before Gene shook the tree limb, he grew paranoid and assumed that Finny was attempting to sabotage Gene’s grades by hosting the club meeting and expecting him to go, and Finny denied the accusation. Gene internally can’t stand how perfect and pure Finny’s character is and it eats away at him, which is what caused him to do what he did with the tree. The following quote from Professor Ellis is a perfect example of the change inside Gene and what caused him to ruin Finny’s life. “Confronted with the evident truth of Finny’s denial, Gene understands his inferiority to Phineas and his own moral ugliness, made the more so when juxtaposed to Finny’s innocence.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide” (370). If this is the case, then how does it apply to John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, set in 1940’s New Hampshire? In the novel, Gene Forrester’s envy and imitation of Phineas lead him to sacrifice his individuality. In A Separate Peace Gene Forrester returns to his time at Devon to examine how his envy and imitation cause him to make courageous and impulsive decisions, to establish his and Finny’s role in their friendship, and to reflect on his achievement of peace. Gene’s spite and imitation affect him on both a mental and emotional level.
“There is time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…” (Emerson p. 372-372). That’s exactly how Gene was in A Separate Peace by John Knowles in the setting of New Hampshire at Daven High School. Gene is jealous of his friend Finny and it affect him and his relationship with Finny. Peace is hard to get in this world but I think Gene found peace in the story by his conflicts. What is envy?
Though he truly desired and strived for a more pleasant life, the tools available to him growing up are exactly what caused his troubles. Rejecting his environment through solitude and alcoholism, he succeeds only at excluding himself before others could, drinking to forget before anyone remembers, and quitting before getting a chance to fail and regret. Henry’s actions reveal a paradoxical strive for escapism through practices that are evocative of and indeed endemic to his unforgiving environment. In the beginning, the young Henry ha optimism in life and his dreams and actions depicted this positive mindset. In that early, the writer shows that Henry subscribed to the concept that one chooses to thrive or fail.
He pointed out Mr. Cathey consistent bombardments of challenges and how he handle each situation. Every good point in his life such as becoming a father was met with a bad point in which he couldn’t go to school because he became a father. The author allowed us to feel happy for the situations that seemed any reasonable person would feel good about and upset about the unforeseen variables that tend to find Mr. Cathey. The author makes sure you feel the joy and pain of a young man who could have made it to a higher level but came up short because of his bad decision
Stephen King’s “The Running Man” is a very tough book to summarise. There are many things that happen throughout it, but due to the nature of the situation, in the end everything around Ben Richards gets destroyed, causing many things that may seem to be key events to have very little impact on the ending of the story. The basic story, removing all of these elements, is that a man named Ben Richards is living an impoverished life in some random town in the U.S., and signs up for a death game called The Running Man to make a whole bunch of money so he can get his daughter’s pneumonia treated. The whole idea of The Running Man is that a man goes on the run for 30 days from the authorities and a group of people called the hunters who are chasing
Gene is slightly athletic, but not in the way Finny is, and Gene is envious of his friend. Another example is Finny wanting to further his academic abilities. Gene is resentful of Finny, because Gene does much better in academics than Finny and doesn't want Finny to be smart. Gene thinks that Finny is trying to compete so Gene devotes much of his time studying and focusing on his studies. The final example is Finny and his good naturedness and likeability.
C.S. Lewis once quoted, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and of, course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” This exemplifies the genuine idea of what pride can do to a soul. Many never fully acknowledge the sincere people who sit around them, and the beauties these individuals hold. Similarly, in Hurst’s, “The Scarlet Ibis,” Doodle’s older brother, the narrator, is driven to push Doodle to succeed in various activities, because he cannot seem to see Doodle’s “inner beauty.” As the thought of making Doodle the best he can be, and displaying his “inner beauty,” eventually leads to a horrific tragedy. To clarify, in “The Scarlet Ibis,” the narrator is introduced as a conceited,
It is also making it harder to find themselves because of all the pressure, while the school itself seems to care the most as preparing seniors before war. In other words, there is an identity crisis is going through an identity crisis and Gene one of the examples that portrays this. One way Gene goes through any identity crisis is anytime he tries to be on top of studies, Phineas treats him like it is something natural that doesn’t need much effort, since he has many trophies for sports. According to A Separate Peace, chapter 4, pages 51 and 52, it states, “You work too hard Phineas said. You know all about History and English and French and everything else.
The boys immaturity of living in the fantasy results in frivolous behavior throughout the start of the book. In the beginning, Ralph tries to establish order by letting the boys vote on rules and on him being chief. As chief, Ralph constantly micromanages the group of boys in order to sustain his power. When things don’t exactly go his way he tries to belittle the boys by reminding them that “[He is] chief..” and of the fact that they voted for him(23). Also, when the littluns (younger boys) start the rumor of a possible terrifying creature, Ralph gets angered and tries to prove his dominance by asserting that “‘..there isn’t a beast!’”(37).