Who Is Gene Forrester Naturally Evil

When he realizes that Finny legitimately cares about him, he feels guilty and strives to develop a more positive outlook on life. At the end of the book, Gene realizes that Finny never thought of anyone as evil and had a true desire to see people succeed.

A Separate Peace is a World War II setting book written by the author, John Knowles. A Separate Peace is an example of a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age  novel. One of the main characters, Gene Forrester, is a perfect example of someone who is coming-of-age. As the  novel progresses, Gene  is transformed and impacted by many different experiences during his time at Devon High School.  In the book, A Separate Peace, Gene  becomes mature from his experiences from Finny’s death and Training for the Olympics; He also loses his innocence, and this teaches the reader about growing up and the idea of losing innocence.

Genes envy and imitation of Finny affect him. Finnys ability to talk his way out of trouble affected Gene’s feelings. According to Knowles,” he had gotten away with everything. I felt a sudden stab of disappointment “(28). This explains how Gene is discussing his disappointed feelings toward Finny.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles tells a story of the external and internal wars a person experiences in their lifetime. During the summer session of 1942 at Devon Academy, introverted student Gene Forrester follows in the footsteps of his carefree yet ambitious best friend, Phineas. Gene starts to envy Finny’s charisma rather than admire. The growth of his selfish desires to transform into Finny contradicts Gene’s morality, creating an internal conflict. Knowles conveys one’s selfishness causes decisions to be based on self-concern rather than the well being of others. For instance, Gene chooses to lie to Finny and the other boys during the mock trial to avoid confrontation. He believes conflict would allow Finny to change his perception

The novel “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles is a story of friendship and conflict. John Knowles uses Gene’s envy to demonstrate that jealousy ruins friendships. This is shown multiple times, including fake friendships, internal conflict becoming physical, and all conflict resulting in the loss of trust of one another.

Emotions can drive people to act in ways they never imagined. The characters in John Knowles novel, A Separate Peace, constantly fall victim to their emotions and often make decisions based off of them. A Separate Peace takes place during World War 2 at an all-boys private boarding school in New Hampshire. The plot follows the life of Gene Forrester in his senior year at the school, and how he faces the competition of school and the war at the same time. In this novel, Gene constantly competes with his best friend Phineas, better known as Finny, however the competition appears as one sided and takes a toll on their friendship.

Gene starts to develop paranormal feelings toward Finny. The author states “Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies” (Knowles 53). One night while Gene is studying, Finny disrupts his train of thought. Gene then starts to think that Finny is out to get him, while in reality he is only being a friend. Finny got angry with Gene when he finds out the truth of how he fell out of the tree.

He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he” (59). These emotions build up and take over him, taking him on an emotional and mental journey, leading up to Finny’s accident. Gene’s thoughts and emotions are unknown to the reader when he bounces the tree branch that Finny is standing on, causing Finny to fall off making Gene a rather unreliable narrator, but also makes Gene seem as though he is fearing something about himself. It almost seems as if Gene’s greatest fear is himself, from not knowing if he really did mean to cause his friend’s accident, and it also seems he fears the fact that he’s confused about his own identity. From the way Gene recollects the memories of the events, it is believable that Gene did not know

Gene’s act of purposely causing Finny to fall out of the tree forces him to feel guilty and move on from his tendencies of jealousy and anger. After Finny’s fall, Gene discovers that Finny is so faithful as to not even accuse Gene of his actions. This causes Gene to begin to feel extreme guilt, thence

Gene and Finny are faced with many situations where either good or evil will take over their decision. When Finny falls of the tree Gene “took a step toward him, and then [his] knees bent and [he] jounced the limb” (Knowles 60). Gene purposefully makes Finny fall even if neither of them realizes or accepts it at first. When Gene makes the decision to cause Finny to fall, he lets evil win. He lets it take him over to benefit himself in the long run. On the other side of it, when Gene tries to tell Finny that he did intentionally hurt him he said “of course you didn’t do it. You damn fool. Sit down, you damn fool” (Knowles 70). Finny does not want to accept the fact that his friend would do such a thing to him. He pushes out the evil that could have let him lash out at his friend and let the good in him refuse to believe it. Lastly, when Gene was fighting with Quackenbush all of a sudden Gene “hit him hard across the face” (Knowles 790). Gene lets the evil take over him and hit Quackenbush in the

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

First, Gene admits to being guilty of shaking a tree in order to injure Finny when he visits him at his home, making Finny livid, and temporarily tearing them apart. Gene is envious of Finny’s athletic ability and bravery. One way Finny shows his bravery is by jumping off a tree for fun. Gene is greatly threatened by the bravery, so he decides to strip it from Finny by shaking the tree one day, making him fall and suffer an injury. Consequently, he instantly regrets his decision, but he realizes that the damage is done. Remorsefully, he wants to apologize for his terrible choice, but when he tries to talk about the situation and confess, Finny is in denial and starts to get angry. Finny’s denial is evident when he says “‘I don’t know anything. Go away. I’m tired and you make me sick. Go away’” (Knowles 70). This dialogue shows how Finny did not believe that Gene caused the incident even after the confession. This is because he believes that Gene would not do such an action. The confession tears Finny apart to the point that he lashes out at Gene and wants him to leave his house. If Gene did not commit the notorious action, Finny would not have to feel the pain physically from the injury, and mentally from the idea that Gene would hurt him, and the boys could have a stronger friendship.

The quintessential element behind John Knowles’s A Separate Peace is one of complex growth through a personal journey, acknowledged as a “bildungsroman.” A bildungsroman is a story of formation, where the main character or characters face their demons. In other words, the novel follows a coming of age tale where a journey of maturity – whether emotional, psychological, or social – involves many events leading to the final personal analysis of which the main character accepts. These concepts were highly present within the storyline of A Separate Peace, and they follow the development of the main character, Gene Forrester. Throughout the conflicts that occurred, Gene slowly transitioned into a new mindset that can be dissected in order to understand the cause of his life-altering experiences.

In the beginning of the novel, Gene, is a clueless individual. He sees the worst in people and lets his evil side take over not only his mind but also his body. During the tree scene, Gene convinces himself that Finny isn’t his friend, tricking himself into thinking that Finny is a conniving foil that wants to sabotage his academic merit. Gene is furthermore deluded that every time Finny invites Gene somewhere it’s to keep him from studying and

The enemy is a focal point for war; the objective is to attack and conquer. If success is reached, all is well, if not, jealousy conquers all. War is more than a physical battle among people; it is also a psychological fight against one’s inner conscience. The relationship between the two friends also follows the same ideology of war, but on a smaller, more personal scale. The coming-of-age novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, takes place in a New Hampshire academy school during World War II; with the plot encircling the adventures of two friends, Gene and Phineas. As their friendship entangles, new personalities are revealed when Gene attempts to fight, both his enemy and urges. The enemy has a stealthy way of sneaking into the novel, hiding in between the lines, becoming apparent at the end; the reader must be the private eye to conclude who the enemy is. Gene’s adversary grows to be himself; in which, he has multiple factors that add up to equal his own tormentor. He infuses his desire to fit in at Devon Academy along with the ambition to be like Phineas; and to top off the enemy, his own guilty conscience.