Virtuous And Evil In A Separate Piece, By John Knowles

What differentiates between virtuous and evil? Though many opinions exist, this worldwide topic is seen throughout TV shows, books, stories, and in everyday life. The subjects of respectable versus malevolent is widely stressed in John Knowles a Separate Piece as Finny and Gene are constantly compared to one another. Taking place at Devon Preparatory school in the summer of 1942. Beginning on a cheery note during the summer session, throughout the story a gloomy mood insidiously intrudes. Along with the mood, Finny and Gene’s relationship slowly deteriorates until the end where they reconcile their friendship. Both Finny and Gene serve as symbols for human’s natural habit to compare the moral and malicious within themselves, but together

Finny repeatedly refuses to see the bad within people and believes that everyone is of pure intent just like him. “‘Well, I did have a trace of doubt, that was because you talked so crazy here. I have to admit I had just a second where I wondered.”’ proclaims Finny to Gene expressing his doubtless affection for his friend (75). Innocent and unsuspecting, Finny’s faith in others is symbolic of a perfect and all-loving state that humans strive to gain. Later, Finny again symbolizes good but in a much different way being described as “He weighed 150 pounds… which flowed from his legs to torso and around the shoulders to arms and full strong neck in an uninterrupted, unempathetic unity of strength” with an obvious emphasis on Finny’s strength (9-10). Throughout the novel, Gene has an emphasis on Finny’s physical prowess constantly conveying Finny as fortified and though never seen in action, Finny has the aura of a hero who fights to defend purity and who is strong and upright in his actions. His description is perfectly suitable for his simple, non-exclusive personality that defends and includes those lesser than

At the end of the novel gene describes Finny’s funeral depicting “I could not escape the feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.” Showing how attached they were to each other (184). Much like Finny and Gene’s relationship the virtues of a person are connected and are not black and white much like how people see them. Instead these two elements of a person worked together, and the person cannot be only good or evil. In the time during Genes “competition” Gene conveys “it was surprising how well we got along in these weeks, sometimes I found it hard to remember his treachery” (48). Much like the many sides of a person, Gene and Finny work together and make each other better, improving while competing. Reliant on each other, Gene and Finny have create a co-dependency with one another that they base their personalities on. A prime example of Gene and Finny’s co-dependency presents itself when Gene tries on Finny’s clothes describing, “but when I looked in the mirror… I was Phineas, Phineas to the life” (54). Eccentric and audacious, Finny’s pink shirt is his trade mark symbol of purity, and in this scene Gene tries on Finny’s “costume”. Much like these characters the good and bad of a person are not only one-dimensional, bad can be good and good can do bad. That’s why this relationship is so fundamental to human existence, it shows that