A SEPARATE PEACE

By John Knowles

                In A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, Knowles writes about two best friends who look up to each other in their own ways.  One

of the characters, Gene, is gealous of his best friend Finny because he is a good athlete, which motivates Gene to want to become better than

Finny by improving his academic skills.  Finny, Gene's best friend, doesn't really care for academics that much and is more into sports, but when

he sees that Gene is improving his academic skills he becomes slightly more interested in raising his grades.  Gene, on the other hand, gets a

little to carried away with his gealousy and breaks Finny's leg by shaking the branch of a tree while Finny was standing on it and causes him to

lose his balance.  John Knowles uses this incident to question friendship in many ways, for example, if there is such a thing as a best friend and

is it all made up by humans to give them a sense of security in someone, for them to trust and love someone, and to make themselves feel

happy, etc.  Gene questions his friendship with Finny lots of times and who doesn't, but we don't know what Finny thinks about Gene except

when he tells us.  Gene and Finny's friendship goes through up's and down's but what friendship doesn't.  In A Separate Peace, Gene and Finny

show their friendship towards one another in many ways through motivation, watching out for one another, forgiveness, and trust in each other.

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But there are many times when they turned on each other, which makes them human.

                Gene and Finny are such good friends because they are able to tell each other things they wouldn't regularly tell anyone else and

are true with one another.  When Gene says, " I jounced the limb.  I caused it.  shows Gene's honesty to Finny by telling him that he is the real

reason that he fell out of that tree and broke his leg (Knowles p.62)".  This shows Gene's honesty to Finny by telling him that he ...

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