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Finny's Shattered Leg In John Knowles A Separate Peace

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Theodor Seuss Geisel, also known as Dr. Seuss, once said, "Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory." Small moments in someone's life can change the way they see things and do things. They may mean nothing at the time, but eventually can be life changing. Theodor Seuss Geisel was trying to show that even if something may seem like nothing, it could be everything needed to change perspective. Knowles uses Finny's shattered leg to reveal to his readers that any moment in life can change a person's way of life forever in a couple of seasons. Through Finny's shattered leg and the changing seasons, John Knowles A Separate Peace illustrates that one small meaningless moment can change someone's life over the …show more content…

After Phineas falls out of the tree he can't do all the things he once did and has wanted to do. Finny dreamed of going into the war, but after he broke his leg no one would let him go into the war. "I'll hate it everywhere if I'm not in this war! Why do you think I kept saying there wasn't one all winter? I was going to keep on saying it until two seconds after I got a letter from Ottawa or Chungking or someplace saying, 'Yes, you can enlist with us.'...Then there would have been a war"(Knowles 190). Phineas denies the war because of him not wanting to accept the reality that he can't be in the war. It was a dream and goal in Finny’s life to fight in the war but is unable to because of his leg. Knowles is using the idea of the war as a dream of Finny's making the reader see that one idea, and one movement can affect someone's life no matter how small it may seem at the moment, and it could still ruin someone's life. Finny struggles with the idea of not playing sports and doesn't want to give them up, "Listen, pal, if I can’t play sports, you're going to play them for me"(Knowles 85). Finny is trying to live through Gene by forcing him play sports for him. He was known as an athletic person and he has an insecurity of not being related or part of athletics so Phineas uses Gene to still have a connection to it. Finny played many sports and was amazing at ones he just …show more content…

Phineas was amazing at sports, he was better than almost anyone but that all changed when the seasons started to change. Finny and Gene were hanging out at the pool and Finny decided to jump into the pool just for fun and tries to beats the school record, “Was he trying to impress me or something? Not tell anybody? When he had broken a school record without a day of practice?”(Knowles 44). Finny breaks a school record without a day of practice and makes it seem like it was no big deal and it was nothing at all. Phineas was athletic and thriving for the summer but as soon as the seasons start to change and it gets closer to Fall he becomes a cripple. Gene's one movement when they were in the tree caused Finny to fall changing the way some people looked at him. During the Summer people looked at Phineas like he was a god. Finny was great at sports but once Autumn came near and after the accident he lost the way people looked at him in a god like manner. People looked at Finny and saw him as the kid who fell out of the tree, they didn't look up to him anymore. People wanted and felt like they should help Phineas, they saw him as someone that needs people to assist him with the simplest of things. Later on when Finny and Gene are talking about the war and Leper Finny says, "Anyway...Then I knew there was a real war on'"(Knowles 164). When Finny comes back during

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Finny is a very likable character because of his great attitude and optimistic action. His ability to make a game out of anything is a contributing factor his popularity amongst the boys at Devon school. Finny is known as the big athlete to Gene. As stated in one of the essays, Gene tries to be the head of the class because he believes that Finny is trying to be the

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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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The friendship Gene and Finny have throughout the story slowly changes to envy that Gene portrays towards Finny as a result of his jealousy. Finny is only one of those sort of gentlemen that is extremely understood and individuals truly like. However, Finny is the kind of individual who is great at everything including sports and talking himself out of trouble. For example, Finny breaking the school swimming recorded lead to Gene being desirous. Gene predicts that Finny is attempting to show off his athletic ability.

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Past and Present: Consequences of Gene Forrester’s Actions Past events play a crucial role in deciding what present actions a character will make. One work where past events characterize what characters do in the present is A Separate Peace by John Knowles. The novel begins with protagonist Gene Forrester returning to Devon Preparatory School. As Gene walks the Devon grounds, he begins to reminisce about the school year of 1943 and the lasting effect it has had on his life.

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On the other hand, Finny is a tremendous athlete, outgoing, and an average scholar. It seems as though their life is peaceful at the Devon School despite the war going on. However, Gene struggled internally to find peace with himself. In the novel, he says” my war ended before I even put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there” (Knowles 204) The reason Gene said that he killed his enemy at the Devon School because he was his enemy.

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In the book “A Separate Piece” by John Knowles, Finny, also known as Phineas was a nice caring person and cared for everyone. He considered everyone his friend even though some people envied him. Finny started slowly losing his innocence after his best bud, Gene pushed him out of a tree branch; because of that he broke his leg and had no possibility joining the war. He started slowly losing his innocence as he coming up with the idea that the war did not exist, also when he could not play sports, and when Gene tries to tell him the truth he does not want to believe it. Finny was ready to enlist in the war, but after the accident he had no choice then to just stay in school.

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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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Finny was one of those kids that was a rebel, but could talk his way out of everything. The “Houdini” of getting in trouble! Gene was obviously jealous of this, like everyone. But, the kicker is when the reader finds out that Gene thought that Finny was trying to sabotage him because he was jealous of Gene’s academic abilities. Finny would never sabotage Gene.

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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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In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene Forrester inadvertently causes the death of his best friend, Finny, a tragedy which results in his premature metamorphosis from an envious and insecure teenager into a man who loves himself and therefore others. At the beginning of the novel, during the summer session at Devon School, Gene describes his feelings about Finny’s evading disciplinary action for using a tie as a belt, a dress code violation: “He had 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 is tired of Finny’s rule-breaking and is jealous of Finny’s powers of persuasion.

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A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, tells a story of a 16-year-old boy, Gene Forrester and his various feelings that he harbors for his gifted best friend, Phineas. Throughout the novel, Gene is constantly living in the shadow of Phineas in which he grows to breed resentment, envy, and even hate. The juxtaposition Gene Forrester is caught up in is dealing with a love and hate relationship that causes him to enmesh in personal misgivings. Thus, people can be their own worst enemy if they don't learn to accept who they are. For in striving to be that, it can be said that insecurity is an invisible weapon that oftentimes kills our self-esteem.

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Some of the main issues Phineas deals with after the accident are never fully physically recovering, changes in personality, and having friends abandon him because of said changes. As a matter of fact, Phineas legitimately had a hole in his head for 11 years. There was a clearly visible section of his skull that never grew back after being blasted to bits. This not only was a problem itself, but also may have been influential in other complications later in his life.

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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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In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene returns to his school when he is an adult and narrates the story of his life at Devon school. When he returns to school he remembers the tree that is the reason Finny’s leg gets broken, and the hard marble stairs. Gene is a charismatic and talented in sports, while Gene is book smart. Beccause Gene is not better at sports than Finny he feels the need to compete with him at everything.

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“Gene’s symbolic fall comes when he gives in to ‘some ignorance inside’ and shakes the limb on which he and Finny stand” (Hamm). Gene’s shaking of the limb resulted “out of a sudden awareness that Finny was not jealous of him, was not competing” and “[his understanding of] his inferiority to Phineas and his own moral ugliness” (Holborn, Ellis). Gene’s fall from innocence is exhibited by the shaking of the limb on which Finny and him stood because it is not only the moment that Gene gives into his jealousy and envy towards Finny, but also his reaction to the manner in which Finny’s goodness sheds light on Gene’s distrustfulness and Gene’s realization that he “is not capable of maintaining the spiritual purity that distinguishes Phineas and so must as he discovers his own savagery betray Phineas” (Holborn, Ellis). This new knowledge that Gene now holds is detrimental to his innocence, as it sparks a malicious intent within Gene to become better than Finny and creates a one sided competition within Gene that can never be won until he accepts the unfairness of the world outside the idyllic summer of 1942. It

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