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Theme Of Friendship In A Separate Peace

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In the book A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the main characters, Gene and Finny, are best friends. Between chapters one and six, you can see the change of their friendship, war, and school. By the end of chapter six, the changes in the book are a series of ups and down for the two boys friendship.
In chapters one and two of A Separate Peace Gene and Finny are best friends. "It 's you, pal," Finny said to me at last, "just you and me." He and I started back across the fields, preceding the others like two seigneurs” (Chapter 1). Some similarities between Gene and Finny are that they are both athletic. Both boys are also very popular in the Devon school. Gene and Finny are also adventurous and are daredevils even though Gene sometimes feels …show more content…

Gene continues to show jealousy towards Finny’s athletic ability. “In such a nonstop game he also had the natural advantage of a flow of energy which I never saw interrupted. I never saw him tired, never really winded, never overcharged and never restless. At dawn, all day long, and at midnight, Phineas always had a steady and formidable flow of usable energy” (Chapter 3). When Finny tries to tell Gene that he studies too much he immediately thinks it’s to sabotage him because Gene is a very paranoid. Gene starts to diminish himself and think of himself as a lesser person than Finny. “Any fear I had ever had of the tree was nothing beside this. It wasn 't my neck, but my understanding which was menaced. He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he” (Chapter 4). I think at the end of chapter 4 when Gene jounced the tree limb it was an act of hatred. I think this because it was shown a lot in chapter 3 and 4 that Gene has a dark, jealous side. Whenever something bad happens to Gene the first person he looks to blame is Finny. It is shown that he is very insecure throughout both of these chapters because he thinks that Finny excels more than he …show more content…

At Devon School peace has almost deserted the campus. War has completely caused severe changes. Finny has received the news that his leg is shattered and sports can no longer be a hobby for him. In chapter 5 Finny can’t return to school yet. “The effect of his injury on the masters seemed deeper than after other disasters I remembered there” (chapter 5). The consequences of his injury were severe and Gene had felt so guilty about pushing Finny off the tree. He knew he had to tell him what happened and it would cause a wedge in their friendship. The sports had changed in the school because Finny wasn’t there and war had broken out. “Sports are perverted from their once "purely good" form and take on warlike traits.” (Chapter 6) Finny’s absence and war times had altered the

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The author, John Knowles, in the novel, “A Separate Peace”, conveys the lesson of friendship, or rather the lack of, with his use of diction. The strategy in which the author phrased certain sections of dialogue between Finny and Gene is there to show that Finny cares for Gene despite Gene’s obvious discontent. The friendship is a one-way street, and the author uses diction to represent this unbalance in the relationship, leading to friendship being a key theme throughout the book. There exist many examples of this diction throughout the novel, one of these is during their illegal beach trip. “I hope you’re having a pretty good time here.

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A Separate Peace, Unit Test Hamza Eldohiri The story “A Separate Peace”, written by John Knowles, was written at the time and takes place during World War II when battles and conflicts amongst nations were evident. Each nation involved struggled and fought their hardest in order to satisfy the good of their nation. Not only is the setting in the story taking place during this time of quarrel, the story also demonstrates areas of self-conflict and an internal battle throughout. The characters in “A Separate Peace”, are described as experiencing this self-conflicting, internal battle. Gene (also the narrator) is specifically depicted as he goes through his battle in life.

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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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