Theme Of Friendship In A Separate Peace

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

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

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