A true friendship must include trust between two people who really care about each other. The novel, “A Separate Peace,” by John Knowles demonstrates the bond between two friends, and how that bond is kept together by trust. This quality can destroy or build a friendship. This story presents the trust and loyalty in a friendship. Knowles displays honest emotion following the scene when the doctor breaks the news that sports are finished for Finny. “Phineas would say nothing behind my back, he would only accuse me, face to face.” (p. 64) This quote confesses the confidence between two people. Their communication contributed to their trustworthiness. Expressing themselves, they are able to create a better solution that …show more content…
Gene is too focused on himself and what he is feeling. He needs to trust Finny and himself. Not trusting a person can lead to a downfall in a friendship. Knowing a person very well contributes to how much trust you have in them. Finny and Gene are both roommates and best friends. They are constantly always around one another and enjoy each others company. Since they have been friends for such a ling time, they have a lot of trust with one another. Through time, their trust builds even more. The time the two friends climbed the tree together demonstrated the most trust in the story because they both assumed that the both of them would never hurt one another intentionally. The more you get to know the person, the more trust you build with them. Overall, Knowles final message about friendship is to have trust in a relationship. If a friendship does not include this feature, it will no be a long lasting relationship. Also, jealousy was proven to weaken a friendship because it causes an internal conflict. In conclusion, trust is the characteristic that brings two people closer together for the
Through these words, we know that Gene and Finny shared a close bond with each other. A little envy is not enough for someone to cause great harm to his closest
Both of the main characters have inner battles they struggle to make peace with throughout the novel. The boys also must come to terms with how these battles impact their friendship. One boy lets jealousy and resentment guide his decisions and the other is in denial of the reality of the friendship as well as the world around him. Once the walls of the Devon School stop protecting the boys from their personal battles each boy is able to attain some type of peace with whom they have become and the path they chose to reach this
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
The author writing Finny’s dialogue always assumes the innocence of Gene, no matter the sentence. It is the clearest in this excerpt: “‘Yes, I remember seeing you standing on the bank. You were looking up and your hair was plastered down over your forehead so you had that dumb look you always have when you’ve been in the water - what was it you said? ‘Stop posing up there’ or one of those best-pal cracks you’re always making.’ He was very happy.”
He still encourages Gene to do the things that Finny no longer can because he wants to see someone else flourish, and most importantly: his friend. After Finny’s death, Gene even declares that “nothing … had broken [Finny’s] harmonious and natural unity” (Knowles 203). Since Gene exclaims this, the reader understands that Finny
The relationship between Gene and Finny changes and evolves, influenced by actions and consequences and filtered by changing perceptions. The changes are frequently by-products of Gene's insecurity and his constant self-evaluation. At times, Gene and Finny are the best of friends, sharing adventures and feelings with complete openness and honesty. At other times, Gene considered Finny to be a rival and a detriment to Gene's ability to all that he could or hoped to accomplish at Devon. This quote helps support how their relationship.
A loving friend turns murderer after his retched jealousness and overanalyzing pushes him to new lows. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the true character of Gene Forrester is shown as he narrates his point of view of the story. Gene Forrester is a relatable ever changing, humanistic, and someone who is always in contention. Although at points Gene seems mentally unstable, he is a round, dynamic character that adapts and is generally mentally sound. Gene being the narrator of his own story shows from his perspective just how he views people and their interactions.
Although, friendship research has been carried out by researchers to studying friendship using qualitative and quantitative approach, however, this essay is going to evaluate and focus more on the contribution of qualitative
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. “ (page 59). Gene wanted Finny to care about Gene and have a concern if Gene was going to beat him in sports, Gene had issues when facing Finny’s confidence.
Once the doctor came out and explain Finny's condition to Gene, he says Finny wants to talk to Gene. Gene then thinks, “Finny would say nothing behind my back, he would accuse me face to face.” (64) Gene knew that Finny would be mad at him after the tree incident. He expected this because he knew that it was true what he did. Gene doesn't doubt that Finny
Gene believes that Finny and he hate each other, until he realizes Finny’s pureness, which Gene can not stand. At first, Gene believes that Finny wants to exceed him, and that the two are rivals. Everyone at Devon likes Finny. The teachers adore him, the students look up to him, the athletes aspire
A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a fictional book about Gene Forrester, a student at Devon Private Boarding School. This story takes place during the 1940s when World War II was becoming more and more a part of daily life at Devon. The war encroaches and finally dominates the lives of the boys at Devon. Starting with the boys shoveling snow off of the train tracks, then their friend, Leper, enlists, and finally troops get permanently stationed at Devon.
Which makes Gene quite an annoyance. When the doctor tells Gene and FInny that Phineas would never play sports again Gene bursts into tears, whereas Phineas tells Gene “What are you looking so sick about?”(65). Phineas understood what happened to him is horrible but frankly Gene feels worse than he does about the situation. This is because Gene is depressed, and feels completely responsible for the situation that ruined his friend’s goals for the
They are supposed to be best friends, but Gene envies him and thinks he is trying to make him look bad. After Finny’s accident, Gene struggled with guilt and his life was changed because of it. “I spent as much time as I could alone in our room, trying to empty my mind of every thought, to forget where I was, even who I was. One evening when I was dressing for dinner in this numbed frame of mind, an idea occurred to me, the first with any energy behind it since Finny fell from the tree. I decided to put on his clothes” (Knowles 29).
According to Webster’s Dictionary, friendship is “the mutual trust between two people.” Friendship is a key factor in truly analyzing and understanding these two novels. It shows that even if the two books have different storylines or characters, these two stories will always remain bound to the idea of friendship. Although there are many themes to choose from in order to juxtapose these two novels, friendship is a very unique and important one to choose because it truly shows the reader the thought processes of the characters. In terms of juxtaposition, friendship is a theme that is filled with depth, as it is like the bridge connecting two separate ideas