Paige Lincoski Advanced English 9 Miss Malley and Miss Borden 19 April 2024 “Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that,” the film director, Oliver Stone, once said. The coming of age novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, is an example of the negative consequences that form because of jealousy and envy in a friendship. It is identified in A Separate Peace that the main character never feels like his own person, due to always being in his friend Finny's shadow, and his strong emotions of jealousy and envy have led to issues throughout their schooling. In John Knowles’ coming of age novel, A Separate Peace, the author conveys the theme of being oneself and avoiding jealousy, otherwise …show more content…
Throughout this novel, all of Gene’s emotions have led to him having an unhealthy relationship with his self identity and conflicts with other people in the book. Gene is starting to grow even more envious of Finny. He soon realizes that Finny is getting away with a lot of things that most others can not; “He has gotten away with everything. I felt a sudden stab of disappointment. That was because I just wanted to see some more excitement; that must have been it” (Knowles 28). Gene has many different emotions about Finny, it is conveyed that he is extremely envious and jealous of him. These negative emotions are the leading factors for some of the problems the two of them have later on. For example, Gene’s jealousy sparked something in him to “jounce” the limb. Gene’s feelings got in the way of their friendship. Gene was planning on enlisting, but when Gene walked in and Finny was there, he changed his mind completely and acted as if he never wanted to in the first place; “Enlist! What a nutty idea, a nutty idea. It’s just Brinker wanting to get there first