A Separate Peace Finny's Friendship

In classic novels, relationships developed between the main character and leading personas tend to depict a prominent theme that the readers can relate to. In the novel, A Separate Peace, negative aspects of Finny and Gene’s friendship are the main topic. Gene, the self-doubtful main character who is envious by nature, struggles with pushing his true personality away with the hopes to become more pure and vibrant; he coveted the idea of become more like his best friend Phineas. The relationship between the two becomes codependent and dangerous as Finny lives vicariously through Gene, and Gene happily goes along with the crippled boy’s antics due to his desire to be anyone but his true self. A Separate Peace apprises the story of a friendship

Gene jostled his good friend off of a tall branch out of spite, and identically, he also jostled away any form of competition between him and his best mate. With Finny gone for the remainder of the summer session, Gene fell into an identity crisis where he felt obligated to keep Finny’s spirit alive while he wasn’t there by becoming Finny himself. In chapter five, Gene dons his bedridden friend’s clothes on with the intention of adopting Finny’s confident nature, whereas in reality the scene just proves his insecurities with their friendship and to himself (Knowles 62). Consequently, this was the start of the downward spiral of their relationship, since Gene alleged to be finding himself by becoming more like Finny and less like his actual nature. Nevertheless, Phineas reveals to Gene after he’s returned to Devon School, saying that he “used to be aiming for the Olympics” (Knowles 117), but since he was handicapped, it was his job to coach Gene instead. This is another example of just how detrimental the relationship between the two boys was; Finny began to live vicariously through Gene, who had no objections to this due to his insecurities and desire to be more like Phineas since the very beginning. The two friends morph into one, indistinguishable personality; Gene is trying to lose more of his true, over-evaluating self, and becoming more like his naïve

An example of this is when Brinker, a fellow student at Devon, had wanted to enlist in the war with Gene. Brinker brought up enlisting in front of Phineas, who did not know why his best friend, Gene, would want to leave him. Therefore, Gene dismissed the idea, and proceeded to tease Brinker for even wanting to join the war, giving him the nickname “The Yellow Peril” (Knowles 109), saying that he would not go to war with even the Chinese. The two simply dismissed Brinker. After Phineas seemed to disapprove the idea of Gene enlisting, Gene states that the “war then passed away from me” (Knowles 108), and after this confrontation, Brinker’s attitude towards the pair changed because he realized he did not have an influence over Gene’s life like Phineas did. Another example of Gene pushing people away due to his strong relationship with Finny is when Leper wrote him, asking him to visit him in his “Christmas location” immediately (Knowles 137). After he runs away from Leper, who was describing a psychotic episode he went through at the military camp, Gene explains that he wanted to be with his best friend “Phineas, and Phineas only” (Knowles 152). Since Gene and Finny were so much of the same at this point of the story, Gene despised conflict of any sort; he wanted nothing to do with Leper. Phineas and Gene’s