“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide” (Emerson). The character Gene learns of this not until after many trials and a great tragedy. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the idea of self-reliance is greatly stressed. The novel A Separate Peace conveys how Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affect him, how Gene’s envy and imitation affect their relationship with Finny, and Gene’s achievement of peace. The envy towards and imitation of Funny greatly affect Gene. One way that it affects him that it causes him to do things that he does not even want to. Gene questions himself about why he continues to listen to Finny “What was I doing here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this? Was he getting some sort of hold over me?” (Knowles 17). 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. Finny talks Gene into going to the beach on a school night, not fearing the consequences. Gene explains “The beach was hours away by bicycle, forbidden,