A Separate Peace Chapter 7

In chapter 11 of A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, Gene is back from Leper’s and wants to see Finny. Gene sees that Finny is in a snowball fight and Gene joins in when Finny hits him with a snowball. Later that night Brinker asks about Leper, Gene decided to tell both Finny and Gene that Leper has gone crazy. Finny admits that there really is war going on if Leper is so affected by it that he has gone crazy. At 10:05 pm that night Brinker and some others want to take Finny and Gene somewhere. They are both confused since it is after hours. Brinker takes them to the Assembly Room where he has taken it upon himself to investigate what really happened in that tree the day of Finny’s accident. Finny and Gene do not want to be in this situation

He tries to get Gene to join him in activities such as the Suicide Society. He even doubts their friendship and wonders if that is a way for him to become better. Gene begins to think that Finny doesn’t want him to succeed because Finny isn’t doing well in his studies. Finny is better than Gene at sports, so he thinks he’s trying to become better than him academically

John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, reveals the many dangers and hardships of adolescence. The main characters, Gene, and Finny, spend their summer together at a boarding school called Devon. The two boys, do everything together, until Gene, the main character, develops a resentful hatred toward his friend Finny. Gene becomes extremely jealous and envious of Finny, which fuels this resentment, and eventually turns deadly. Knowles presents a look at the darker side of adolescence, showing jealousy’s disastrous effects. Gene’s envious thoughts and jealous nature, create an internal enemy, that he must fight. A liberal humanistic critique reveals that Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, has a self contained meaning, expresses the

Finny is very vulnerable, throughout the book Finny lets his friends see how he is not perfect, even though he tries to because he feels as if he should live up to their expectations of how they portray Finny to be. Finny may be a hero, but he's far from invincible, and his ability to be broken keeps him human in our eyes, no matter how Gene would have us see him. He makes himself vulnerable emotionally, Gene recognizes his friend's vulnerabilities, both in retrospect and as a sixteen-year-old. He says of his friend, "Phineas was a poor deceiver, having had no practice" (8.73). Phineas is useless in a world of antagonism and fighting. For his skills, for all his

In the fiction novel, “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles, there are plenty of characteristics exposed from the setting about the character Finny. How the setting of the novel helps reveal the character Finny is by the way he reacts towards his education, sports, and friends. He and a friend, Gene, go back fifth-teen years as if they were still at Devon High School, which is a boarding school for boys only.

A separate peace; In the book “A Separate Peace” a book by John Knowles there are two young teenagers that are going into the war. He defines the theme with excellence. The true person that gene is to Phineas deals with the characteristics, personality, and difference’s. In the three body paragraph’s they include the characteristics similar traits, personality how they get along, and their difference’s what they don’t do alike.

Throughout John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, Gene’s internal struggle is reflected in the war taking place. In the beginning of the story, Finny tells Gene that he was reading the paper and saw that “[the United States] bombed Central Europe...”(25). At this point in the story, it is 1942, which is the midst of World War II. This reflects Gene’s attitude toward Finny. As the war starts to escalate and the United States enters, Gene starts to loathe Finny for reasons that are entirely from Gene’s head. When Finny returns to Devon for the winter session, he has convinced himself, and soon convinces Gene, that “there isn’t any war”(115). Around this time, Gene pushes away his hateful thoughts towards Finny and convinces himself that Finny and him

To begin with, Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affects him. He is affected because he begins to forget the consequences that he could receive for the things he does with Finny. For example,

When Gene is quick to realize that him and Finny will never be of the same power, Knowles shows us that a loss of identity may be present in a relationship if there is an unequal amount of power. Gene realizes that Finny is someone who can do anything and he states that “He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could be any rivalry between us. I was not the same quality as he” (59). Gene’s low self-esteem starts to build up as he explains that no matter how hard he tries, he will never be as good and powerful as Phineas. Finny has everything in his power and is capable of so many things also remaining his own person. However, Gene feels the complete opposite as he understands that to become someone as mighty as Finny, he has to change who he is to even get Finny to notice him as a threat. As a result of this unequal

Brinker questions Gene, alluding to the fact that he wanted Finny dead so he could have the dorm room to himself. Gene laughs off the joke, continuously saying the Finny simply lost his balance, not admitting to his wrongdoing. Once Finny fell out of the tree and was gone, all of Gene's innocence was gone too. From there he had experiences that would shape him into the boy he was at the end of the story. When Finny comes back, Gene feels it's his duty to take care of him.

The Two Fridas, by Frida Kahlo, and John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, both address the issue of identity. Finding identity is not an easy task. It not only makes up an individual, but builds him or her up leading to a stable place in society. Not having an identity, causes an individual to be codependent in every aspect of their life. In the painting, The Two Fridas, both portraits of Frida Kahlo are attached to each other by a single vein that runs through their bodies and ends up in the heart.

With each scenario, it is shown that most of the time Gene’s enemies are only in his head- not many are in a battle to reign supreme as he is. The war put together with these power struggles allows for such a well done piece, for the reader learns that even in times where others are in battle one does not have to be anchored against someone. Phineas and Gene’s relationship is also instrumental in delivering this message because the reader can witness Phineas, with his free and peaceful ways and realize that Gene does not have to be on the defense and seek power all of the time. Phineas is a unique contrast to Gene that helps Knowles prove his point. Just as in the book, life shows us that this urge to beat an “enemy” is unnecessary and can often have consequences like the ones Gene experienced. It is crucial to recognize the reigning powers in life and not let them take over and cause one to find evil in everyone- Knowles displays this perfectly with Gene and his

Normally when you think of friends, you do not associate them with fear. It seems like Knowles associated fear with Gene's friends. After purposely jostling the tree branch to injure Phineas, Gene did not want to immediately tell Phineas what had actually happened. Gene said that his fear of jumping off the tree branch was forgotten after this event. Phineas did not know if he had fallen on his own or if he had been pushed by Gene. Gene was understandably worried about Finny's reaction to this conversation, so he put the conversation off for as long as he could. He also did not completely trust Phineas. Even though they were supposedly friends, Gene thought that Finny was secretly one of his rivals. Gene said, "The way I believed that you're-my-best-friend blabber" (Knowles 53). Finally, Gene showed that he was fearful of his friends toward the ending of A Separate Peace. When Brinker decided that there must be a trial to determine what had happened to Phineas, Gene fretted about what his fellow students might discover about him. Brinker said, "What I mean is it wouldn't do you any harm, you know, if everything about Finny's accident was cleared up and forgotten" (Knowles 160). He did not want them to find out about his role in Finny's injury. After Phineas injured his leg rushing down the steps of the Assembly Hall, Gene seemed to have a sense of fear until Finny died. Phineas never seemed to fear Gene, even after he had found out about Gene's role in his injury.

Gene was attempting to be top of his class academically, but he was continuously being distracted by Finny. Oneday Gene decided to ask Finny if he would be upset if Gene was top of their class. Finny responded by saying, “‘I’d kill myself out of jealous envy’” (Knowles 52). Although Phineas said that in a joking manner, it is clearly that he really would be jealous if Gene was top of their class. Finny loved to be first, and he didn’t like when people threatened his position. After pondering on Finny’s comment, Gene realized, that he may have, “deliberately set out to wreck [his] studies” (Knowles 53). Finny clearly had extreme envy of Gene for better academically. It is unhealthy for friends to be jealous of each other, especially when taken to that extreme. Finny was being unsupportive and selfish, just so that he could be better than Gene.

Little sorrow and sadness is expressed around school, even in Gene; no one talks about what happened but everyone remembers, especially Gene. Throughout the novel, John Knowles' strong characterization of Finny results in a more developed and wiser Gene; in the end, Finny actually makes Gene a better person.