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A Separate Peace Character Analysis

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In the book A Separate Peace, it shows contrast between two students friendship. Gene is a young boy at Devon military boarding school. And experiences problems at the school with the relationship between him and his best friend. He shows compassionate friendship to Finny his best friend, but rapidly gets violent to his state of mind. Looks at Finny as if he is the enemy. And is trying to stop him from looking good. Gene starts to compete towards Finny but silently. As he starts to think Finny is holding him back from being smart. He sets a goal to be valedictorian, and starts to get violent with Finny. For example, “I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn’t help envy him that a little, which was perfectly …show more content…

Because of this, Gene sometimes envies Finny, and is not surprising when his jealousy bring violent actions. For example, Gene says “ A way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations, letting its rock like facts sift through and be accepted only a little at a time, only as much as he could assimilate without a sense of chaos and loss”(13.46). Gene’s violence makes him dangerous towards Finny. And messed up Finnie’s life resulting in emotion and physical trauma. When Phineas hears and suspect that Gene is the one that is hurting him he runs and falls down stairs resulting in his death. Then Gene see’s Finny cry for the first time and hear him yell at Brinker saying “You got the rest of the facts Brinker! You get all your facts! He plunged through the doors… Then these separate sounds collided into the general tumult of his body falling clumsily down the white marble stairs.”(11. Pg. 106).Phineas is hurt emotionally when he hears the group suspect Gene making him fall. Finny doesn’t believe any of it but tries to make them stop. But Brinker won’t stop talking about it. Then Finny runs out and falls down stairs and dies. This is a tragic moment that shows ignorance in the human heart and can destroy someone or even

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Gene could have been thinking that taking part in having Finny break his leg for the first time would stop Finny competing against Gene in sports and academics, but possibly realized later that Phineas was never competing against Gene, because Finny could never see the “evil” in

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Before the injury, Gene would scream at Finny,but now he feels like he owes Finny his kindness. This passive and emotional Gene is probably the greatest evidence to show that Gene is a dynamic character. Before the injury when Finny would try to explain anything Gene would reply in annoyed tone, “‘Oh, for God sake.’ I slammed close the french book”(57). After the injury however Gene felt like he constantly had a space to fill to make Phineas feel better.

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Gene’s relationship with his “best friend” Phineas describes how the relationship resulted in the killing of Gene's enemy, his own youth, and innocence. Gene is plainly described in the novel as envious of Finny, he is also depicted as the position of much hatred and dismay by his peers. Therefore, the fact that Gene kills his own youth is likely considering Finny’s success, Gene’s jealousy towards

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In A Separate Peace, the reader can see that Finny’s death was part of a chain reaction caused by Gene. His death shows that a person not knowing their identity and who they are could affect other people and not just themselves. Although Gene didn’t directly kill Phineas, we can see how Gene being so overly obsessed with trying to be someone he’s not affected several people. He lost his identity and it cost someone else’s life rather than his own.

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Since Finny cannot play sports anymore because of his broken leg, he tells Gene that he has to do it for him. Gene realizes that this is his destiny; to become an extension of Phineas. Another way he is affected is that he starts to lose his own ways by copying Finny. When Finny was in the hospital wing of the school, Gene put his clothes on and said “that I would never stumble through the confessions

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Gene struggles with keeping a positive relationship with Finny which symbolizes the loss of childhood. “I was Phineas, Phineas to the life. I even had his humorous expression in my face, his sharp, optimistic awareness. I had no idea why this gave me such intense relief, but it seemed, standing there in Finny’s triumphant shirt, that I would never stumble through the confusions of my own character again”(Knowles 54). Wearing the image of childhood, Gene feels comfortable.

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As a result, he forms a false narrative in which Finny has malicious intent, which is detrimental to their relationship. Additionally, Gene realizes that his connection to Phineas is due to envy and imitation, which means that in his maturity, they were not truly friends. Alton states, "However, as Gene matures, he starts to develop his own identity. He recognizes his attraction to deadly things and, more significantly, he writes a narrative about his relationship with Phineas, revealing the flaws in his own character which led to Phineas's death" (Alton). In his mature state, Gene realizes his flawed relationship with Phineas, meaning that they were not really friends, and it was more of an envious imitation.

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Creating much controversy, Phineas tries his best to avoid facing the truth about Gene's disloyalty that cost him his athletic dreams and life. Many confrontations and lessons happened between Gene and Finny, all while the two continued to love each other. Soul-searching is a hard journey in an adolescent's life. “It was only after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak”. Gene is a subtle, less confrontational person who more or less goes along with situations at the beginning of the book.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that, “envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide.” (370). John Knowles’ A Separate Peace is set during World War I at Devon School, a boarding school for boys. The book centers on Gene Forrester, a student at Devon, who could be described as an intelligent, but jealous, conformist. A Separate Peace illustrates Gene’s envy and imitation of his friend, Finny, and how it affects himself and his relationship with Finny, and also how Gene eventually finds peace.

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Gene started to wear Finny’s clothes that he had left there, holding himself like Finny, and eventually gaining Finny’s old status. People looked at him the way they had used to look at Finny. “I was Phineas, Phineas to the life,” Gene stated about himself. He himself knew what he was becoming and it was exactly what he had envied for for so long, though he knew what he had done to hurt Finny and felt extremely guilty about the situation. He decided to go visit Finny at his home on a break and check up on him as well as attempt to tell him what had actually happened that day at the tree.

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“Then a second realization broke as clearly and bleakly as dawn at the beach. Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies.” (24) Gene thinks this after going to the beach with Finny and ruining his grade because of the lack of studying due to his time spent having fun. This is just one example of how Gene thinks there's some sort of ongoing competition between themselves, causing Gene to be extremely jealous, self concerning and over analyzing about every situation instead of just enjoying the fun the two have as Finny does. Even though Gene acts like this he is still very friendly and a good person.

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He goes back to his old school, Devon, and visits the two sites where his life changed. Gene copes with his feelings and realizes he has forgiven himself. “I began at that point the emotional examination to note how far my convalescence had gone” (Knowles 11). The narrator matures after seeing the sites where Finny died and fell from the tree, and he knows he never meant to hurt Phineas. Gene also remembers growing up when confronting Finny to tell him he had jounced the limb.

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