Friendship in A Seperate Peace
Friendship in A Seperate Peace
"He got away with everything because of the extraordinary person he was. It was quite a compliment to me, in fact, to have such a person choose me for his best friend" (21). The friendship of Gene, an intellectual, and Finny, a fearless athlete, is the focus of John Knowles’s A Separate Peace. Narrated by Gene Forrester, this is a story of two youths growing up at a beautiful boys’ boarding school in New England. Set at the headwaters of World War II, the bond between Gene and Phineas grows as the peace in Devon School diminishes.
‘ "It’s you pal," he said, "just you and me." He and I started across the fields, proceeding the others like two seigneurs"’(10). Gene becomes Finny’s best friend the moment he jumps out of the tree and into Devon River as a result of Finny’s goading. Since then, Finny is the dominant factor in all the choices the Gene makes: ‘Why did I let Finny talk me into this? Was he getting some sort of hold over me? "Jump!" With the sensation that I was throwing my life away, I jumped into space’ (9). When Gene jumps, in a way he is throwing his life away to Finny, because from that point forward, Finny will be the overwhelming influence of his life.
Gene and Phineas are like two poles of a magnet, opposite yet bound together. Finny excels in athletics and sports while Gene excels in academics. Finny is the extroverted leader and Gene is his follower. Finny shines bright and Gene is his shadow. Their personalities and strengths are different and yet they are inseparable.
The real story begins when Gene doubts Finny’s loyalty. As an adolescent, Gene’s insecurity causes him to suddenly believe that such a friend as Phineas is too good to be true. He suspects Phineas is dragging him along in all his venturesome ideas to keep him from being the top student. To confirm his suspicions, Gene asks Finny about his feelings: "You wouldn’t -- mind if I wound up head of the class, would you?" "I’d kill myself with jealous envy"(44). Gene takes this answer literally and believes that their friendship has been a competition all along:
Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies. That explained blitzball, that explained the nightly meetings of the Super Suicide Society, that explained his insistence that I share all...