A Separate Peace by John Knowles Book Analysis

As Alexis Carrel says, “Like hatred, jealousy is forbidden by the laws of life because it is essentially destructive.” In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the story is told through Gene’s point of view. It tells the experience between him and his best friend Finny. Their life at Devon and the hardships Gene goes through are all shown, the envy Gene has toward his best friend Finny, and how it can cause something destructive between the best of friends. With a war going on the story shows all these different details. One of the most soft spoken characters whose name is Leper going crazy and completely changing due to the events from the war happening. Finny’s fall from the tree is caused by Gene when he jounces the limb. Lastly, one of the most loveable characters dying. The main focus as of now is how two very different people can be alike and different in many ways. 

To start, Finny is an interesting character. He is an outgoing character, loves to do things involving sports and he is just spontaneous and gets away with things that no one else could get away with at Devon. Finny loves sports.  He breaks a record but lets no one know about it. This action of his was odd as he breaks a record no one had broken for years with no practice whatsoever, he wants it to to be kept between him and his best friend Gene. Just like his best friend he gets these impulses. For instance the winter olympics he came up with when his leg was healing. There is no winter Carnival at Devon until Finny came up with it out of nowhere and went on about the plans as they went. An example for this is.  Finny is not as school smart and does not like to live by the rules. Finny makes this clear throughout the text in one of the later chapters in the novel and film. He enjoys sports more than anything and he enjoys the company of his best friend. Both of them are dependent on each other throughout the novel, even though Gene thinks there is some sort of competition between them, Finny makes it clear to Gene that there is never any competition with them. Finny does not abide by the rules at all. Finny is charismatic and well liked around Devon, he gets along well with the other boys and is never nasty toward anyone throughout the novel.  In conclusion, Finny is a charismatic, enthusiastic, and daredevil character despite his injury that does not allow him to play sports for the rest of his life.  “You know what we’d better do next Saturday?” he began in one of his voices, the low-pitched and evenly melodic one which for some reason always reminded me of a Rolls-Royce moving along a highway. “We’d better organize the Winter Carnival.”(Knowles, Page 68).  The reason this quote is significant to the text is because it shows how spontaneous Finny can be.

Finally, the main character Gene. Gene is an odd and unlikeable to others in the real world who are reading this novel. Unlike Finny he is insecure about himself because Gene feels as if he is not as good as his best buddy. Due to this Gene forms this jealousy and secret rivalry in his mind through the story. It causes him to do things that people would normally not do such as making your friend fall from a tree because he could not control it and Gene did not know what washed over him at that moment when he realized what he had done. Gene is also very intelligent and often gets good grades in school, he studies and is somewhat of a model student some would say. Gene studies and works hard when it comes to school, exactly the opposite of Finny. With Finny Gene does not live by the rules as his best friend encourages him not to. Lastly, the envy and jealousy Gene for Finny which he keeps quiet about for a while. There is an obvious reason as to why he would be jealous, Finny gets away with things no one else would be able to get away with. Going to the beach for example, Finny mentions that the only real swimming is swimming in the ocean. Going there by bike could result in them getting expelled from Devon but they go anyway. Gene wanted to stay because he had something important to do in the morning but said “all right.” No one found out about it. Another good example would be when they missed dinner. Finny explains to Mr. Prud’homme that they were swimming in the river, then mentions there was a wrestling match and finally a sunset that no one wants to miss, and finally says they had to see some friends for business. Mr. Prud’homme did nothing about this and when Finny says the real reason they were gone and explains why, Mr. Prud’homme just lets out an amazed laugh. This shows how Finny gets away with things and how Gene could envy that.  Finny is just so good at everything he does, he has it all.