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Character Analysis: A Separate Peace By John Knowles

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Emerson states that “Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide”(370).In the novel A separate Peace written by John Knowles which takes place in New hampshire during war.Gene is a Character with jealousy and a person that would always want to be better than anyone.A Separate peace demonstrates how Gene’s envy and imitation of finny affects him, affects his relationship with finny,and achieves his peace. Gene’s envy and imitation of finny affect him.One way gene is affected is that gene cannot be himself so he decides to put on finny clothes.The author states,”...An idea occurred to me,the first with any energy behind it since finny fell from the tree.I decided to put on his clothes”(Knowles 62).This quote shows that gene putting on finny clothes …show more content…

Although gene envy and imitation affects him and his relationship with finny,Gene still achieves his peace.The first reason is when gene reaches his peace only after being away from phineas.For example,”an atmosphere in which I continued now to live,a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entity personal reservation(194)”(Alton).This example shows how gene reaches his peace when being separated away from finny.It describes him as being in a new atomsphere.It also shows how finny life and death taught him a way of living.The second reason is when gene acknowledges that the real enemy is himself and achieves his peace when maturing.For example,”Gene’s acknowledgement that the real enemy is within himself and,indeed,within each of us:we’re all liable to corruption from within by our own envy,anger,and fear”(Alton).This quote shows how gene peace is achieved after fighting within himself of growing up.It also shows how his own envy,anger,and fear all archives his

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660 Words | 3 Pages

“Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide” (Emerson 138). In John Knowles’ “A Separate Peace,” Gene becomes so envious of his friend Finny that he starts to act like him; he was jealous of Finny’s capability of getting away with anything, and he also feels bitter because he sees Finny as being better than himself. Although it started as common friendship envy, it grew into a terrible animosity damaging the relationship between these two characters. For starters, Gene and Finny’s friendship is an uncommon one. They are somehow the opposite of each other: Gene is a smart, introverted guy while Finny is the athletic, extroverted one.

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611 Words | 3 Pages

“Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide” (Emerson 370). John Knowles’s A Separate Peace takes place at a boarding school, Devon, in New Hampshire during World War II. Gene Forrester, one of the main characters, is a conformist that envies his best friend, Phineas (Finny). Gene is academically inclined and introverted, whereas Finny is athletically gifted and outgoing. A Separate Peace depicts how Gene’s envy and imitation affect him and his relationship with Finny, and how Gen found peace within himself after Finny’s death.

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449 Words | 2 Pages

Through the course of the book Gene feels jealous of Finny, but he’s not too sure. “This time he wasn't going to get away with it. I could feel myself becoming unexpectedly excited at that” (John Knawels, 27). Finny, gets away with anything, which makes Gene jealous but when he’s about to get in trouble, he’s excited. He labels him as the enemy, yet he adores him.

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711 Words | 3 Pages

“A Separate Peace” portrays how Gene’s envy and imitation affects himself, his relationship with Finny, and how he finds his peace, or lack thereof, at the end of the book. Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affects him in many ways. He starts to believe he was meant to become a part of Finny. After Finny broke his leg from falling out of a tree, he tells Gene that he must play sports for him. Gene then thinks to himself “and 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 part of Phineas,” (Knowles 85).

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776 Words | 4 Pages

Gene’s outburst in the tree was completely natural. Gene knew everything he could learn from Finny, to leave Finny alone would stand as a testament, in Gene’s mind, to Gene’s shortcomings. Gene had become lost in the past and in the mind of Finny as shown by Knowles with “"It's you, pal," Finny said to me at last, "just you and me." He and I started back across the fields… We were the best of friends at that moment”

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822 Words | 4 Pages

He is basically, through rhetorical questions, saying that he does not want to do what Finny does, but it’s like he cannot help it. This is affecting who Gene is as a person because he is not thinking for himself. Is Gene really even himself if Finny is doing the thinking for him? If he is not thinking for himself, he is not being true to himself. Another way that Gene is affected is that he allows his imitation of Finny get in the way of his schooling.

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1349 Words | 6 Pages

The Destruction Caused by Jealousy Jealousy and impulsiveness can lead good people to do bad things. Jealousy is defined as the state of feeling or showing envy of someone or their achievements and advantages and impulsiveness is defined as a tendency to act on a whim, displaying behavior characterized by little or no forethought, reflection, or consideration of the consequences. The combination of these two vices can lead to the destruction of not only friendships but of life itself. In John Knowles’ A Separate Peace Gene and Brinker acted impulsively and did foolish things that led to and caused Finny’s death. Gene and Brinker were so self absorbed that they did not contemplate the consequences of their actions.

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870 Words | 4 Pages

The author of An Overview of “A Separate Peace” says that, “he reaches this atmosphere only after separating himself from Phineas and finding his own identity,” (Alton). When Gene had been focused on becoming just like Finny, he was not at peace. However, when Gene starts constructing and discovering his own identity, he has a complete burden lifted from his shoulders, therefore finding his peace. To conclude, Gene finds peace by realizing that Phineas was not the enemy and by finding his own

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888 Words | 4 Pages

Gene does this in order to find peace within his older self from his younger self’s experiences. A Separate Peace illustrates how Gene’s envy and imitation affect him, affect his relationship with Finny, and his achievement of peace. Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affects

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1424 Words | 6 Pages

Personal inhibition can cause an individual to lash out, and harm others around them. Author Knowles represented this through Gene, and his constant battle with his thoughts and assumptions. Early in the book we see Gene show multiple signs of jealousy, whether it be during the swimming scene (44), or when he lashes out at Phineas while trying to study for a test (57). The swimming scene represents the theme of jealousy, and as a result we are seen with Gene left in awe of Phineas’s ability to beat the school record without an ounce of practice. His jealousy resulted in him creating the assumption that Phineas was dominant over him, and he must counteract that with academics in order to restore a balance, or a slight dominance over Phineas.

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671 Words | 3 Pages

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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506 Words | 3 Pages

In the beginning of the novel, Gene returns to Devon to understand what happened in 1942. This is important because Gene seeks to console the guilt he has faced. Furthermore, Gene shows his shame after Finny was jounced off the tree. Remorse over Finny's injury ate Gene up, causing Gene to not participate in sports. Gene feels disgrace while in the infirmary thinking, "If Phineas had been sitting here in this pool of guilt...what would he have done?"

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741 Words | 3 Pages

Even through Gene’s envy and imitation effected his relationship with Finny, he still managed to find peace within everything that happened. Throughout A Separate Peace, Gene found peace within himself and within his relationship with Finny. The first reason this is so is because he (Gene) realizes that Finny isn’t the enemy after all. In An Overview of “A Separate Peace”, Alton states, “

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701 Words | 3 Pages

Gene had achieved peace. His separation from finny allowed him to do things for his own self such as think. According to “An Overview of a Separate Peace “,” He reaches this atmosphere only after separating himself from Phineas and finding his own identity” (Alton).When finny dies Gene notices his significance of his self in school and in life. Another reason is that he enlists in the war. Before he died, Finny enlisted into every branch he could and no one accepted him.

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996 Words | 4 Pages

He feels that his actions were so dark, so horrific, that he could not ever know kindness again. He wanted Phineas to be even with him, yet his actions caused Phineas to be so far behind him that he can no longer compare. This causes him to finally be able to understand freedom in chapter eight. Gene always wanted to be equal to Phineas, and now he feels that he has surpassed the bar that Phineas left. Gene believes that he is freed from the torment of needing to measure up to Phineas, which is shown when he thinks, “…I lost myself, oppressed mind along with aching body; all entanglements were shed, I broke into the clear” (Knowles 120).

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