A Separate Peace Character Analysis

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

Finny is very outgoing and rebellious while Gene is smart and plays by the rules. Gene also wishes that he was more like Finny. “To keep silent about this amazing happening deepened this shock for me. It made Finny seem too unusual for not friendship, but too unusual for rivalry, and there were few relationships among us at Devon not based on rivalry.” (63) Gene has a desire to be like Finny and have a more rebellious attitude instead of his caring attitude but he just cant. Gene is always Jealous of Finny and spends too much time worrying about him. The beliefs of Finny and Gene are very different but that is one way Gene are very different but that is one way Gene doesn't want to be like

A Separate Peace “envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide” (Emerson 370). The author John Knowles, goes back to his old high school in Devon, New Hemisphere to find his peace. Gene’s characteristics in the novel shows that he is jealous, smart and conformed. A Separate Peace demonstrates how Gene’s jealously affects him, affects his friend and helps him find his peace. Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affects him.

Their differing personalities was the stressor of their relationship at times. The smarter of the two, Gene was always wanting to stay inside their dorm and study instead of doing other things with all of the other boys. Although Gene is super studious Finny is the opposite. He is what now-a-days we would call a “Jock” he enjoyed sports and being popular. Nothing else interested him, he didn’t like to study or do anything that meant he had to stay inside for long periods of time. Blitzball was the sport that Finny invented while Gene was studying in the dorm for his French final. Up until the very last time that our two main characters talked to each other they were butting heads, From Finny getting Gene to jump from the tree to Funny breaking the school's record for swimming and not wanting to tell anyone they were forever having conflicting

In his highschool years at The Devon School, Gene became close with a complicated group of teenage boys, like himself. His closest friend and roommate is a boy named Finny who is obviously the most outgoing and rebellious in the group. He is the initiator of most of their activities. Throughout the story it is obvious that Gene is jealous of his friend and therefore gets pressured into the things Finny puts on him. Because he is constantly following the crowd, Gene begins to lose his individuality and finds himself completely overcome with jealousy. Subconsciously, Gene even puts his best friends life at risk by shaking the branch of a tree while Finny was ontop of it at the time. As a result of this Finny falls off which disables him and ultimately leads to his

According to the novel, Finny and Gene are best friends. They would both go to places together and share a room at school. As Gene gain his knowledge, he becomes more conscious about his greed and desires for being successful at beating Finny for his athleticism and capability. He also surmised that Finny was keeping him from making good grades by stopping him from accomplishing his academic courses. Gene had came to a realization that he hated Finny and wanted to be better than him. It was all a misunderstanding because Finny never

Through such struggle and friendship, they became so close that Gene felt as though he embodied Finny. Finny and Gene went through tough times that were close to ripping their relationship

At the start, Gene is instantly jealousy of Finny, creating a fake friendship that is fueled by competition. This is shown when he wants to do something so he is good at, so he “was becoming the best student in the school: Phineas was without question the best athlete, so in that way we were even” (Knowles 55). This proves that their friendship is fueled by competition because it shows that Gene always wants to be even. This

In John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, The relationship between Gene and Finny is recounted and told through Gene’s recollections. When Gene’s emotions get in the way his perception of his best friend is extremely skewed, this is based on Gene’s thought in the first chapter, “feeling becomes stronger than thought”. Young Gene does not perceive that Finny is not as spiritually pure as he originally believed and Gene himself may be less spiritually depraved than he had thought. This leads to a balance that Gene had never detected. Gene’s perception and interpretation in the telling of the story is one sided, and perhaps more fiction than fact is portrayed in Gene’s perspective. Gene draws conclusions based on his interpretation and that affects

A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a novel that demonstrates major transformations in the characters Gene and Finny, pitting their early innocence and adulthood later in the novel. Published in 1959, the novel follows the two characters as they are largely influenced by WWII, a feud between the two characters, and major changes in other characters and the environment around the two. A Separate Peace is the pinnacle of a coming of age novel.

As Gene feels the obligation to lose himself to become Finny, Knowles shows us that a loss of identity may be present in a relationship if there is an unequal amount of power. When Finny tells Gene that he has to play sports in the place of Finny himself, Gene says, “I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas” (77). Gene loses who he is to become the powerful Finny because told him to do so. He feels the need to give up his identity seeing that he has the order to do. This results in an unequal friendship because a true friend would never force someone to do something that would make them lose who they actually are. Gene and Finny’s unbalanced friendship eventually causes paranoia and insecurity on the less powerful side known as Gene because he is giving himself up.

Gene and Finny became very close, until tragedy struck. Gene could no longer accept the way it was. Gene eventually took matters into his own hands. Finny had a made a club called The Super Secret Society Club of

The rivalry between Gene and Finny starts because Gene grows extremely jealous of Finny athletic abilities. This happens because of the expectations the war has put on the young adolescents at Devon. Since Gene and his friends are expected to enlist for the army anyway, Gene’s intellectuality gets overlooked, and Finny’s athletic abilities gets praised. Gene’s growing

Throughout life, there is always a person who one strives to beat, be better than or rise above. Little does each of them know that in the end the two actually make each other stronger. In John Knowles' novel, A Separate Peace (1959), he addresses just this. The novel, told from Gene Forrester's point of view, is based on a friendship and rivalry between him and his friend, Finny, during World War II. The two sixteen year olds attend Devon School, a private all boys' school, in New Hampshire. Finny, a very athletically talented youngster, continually but unintentionally causes Gene to feel inferior and insignificant, producing inevitable anger and jealousy inside Gene. During their

Some friendships last forever and others do not but in the novel, A Separate Peace (1959) by John Knowles, displays a different kind of friendship. The reader throughout this novel was very entertained. This novel takes place at the Devon Preparatory School in the years of 1942-1943.