The Fate of a Liar in A Separate Peace, by John Knowles
The Truth Will Come Back to Hurt You
One of the biggest themes from the novel, A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, is that denying the truth does not make it disappear. He displayed this idea in various parts of the novel. When Gene refused to believe that he was jealous of Finny and finally believed that he was, he did something very drastic. Another time was when Finny refused to believe there was a war, but changed his mind when he saw how one of his good friends was mentally scarred by it. Finny also refused to believe that his best friend could deliberately cripple him for life, but eventually he began to believe it, and ultimately, that lead to his death.
In the back of his mind, Gene always knew that he was in one way or another, jealous of Finny. He wished that he could be as carefree and charismatic as Finny was, but he didn't want to admit it. He denied this so much that it made him believe that his very best friend was jealous of him. Gene convinced himself that Finny was out to sabotage his grades in school because he was not as good in school as Gene was. That assumption led Gene to do something terrible. On one night, Leper, a good friend of both the boys, decided he wanted to qualify for the Super Suicide Society. The society was something Finny made up, that he and Gene were in together. It required the boys to jump out of a gigantic tree into a flowing river. Gene was in denial so badly about his feelings for Finny that when Finny was about to jump out into the river, Gene jounced the branch Finny was standing on. He fell to the ground, broke his leg, and was crippled forever. Just because Gene denied that he was jealous of Finny, doesn't mean that he wasn't. His false denial caused him to physically hurt his friend.
After Finny's leg was so badly broken, he could no longer do any physical activities. That meant that he couldn't be in the war, which was his dream. Finny decided that because he couldn't be in the war, there must really be no war. He pushed the truth so far out of his...