Summary Of A Separate Peace By John Knowles

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A Innocent Maturation The characters Gene, Finny and Leper in A Separate Peace by John Knowles go through certain events that change their lives. The different experiences where Gene, Finny and Leper fall victim and are helped to mature faster and help endure their vital identity which leads them to shed their innocence. Gene’s jealousy towards Finny makes him think and act in different ways, which cause him to lose his innocence. Firstly, When Phineas interferes with Genes studies, Gene thinks that he is doing that on purpose so that he would fail and the teachers would consider Finny to be the better student. Gene thinks, “That way he, the great athlete, would be way ahead of me.” (53). Gene starts to think that he is competing with Finny and finny was trying to get ahead of him by using trickery, but he takes the competition that’s in his head too far and creates enemies for himself out of things that’s all in his head without any facts. Furthermore, Gene’s jealousy…show more content…
Gene’s jealousy really goes out of control and harms his best friend. He felt that was the only way he would out-compete Finny athletic abilities. Now he would considered to be the overall student athlete with a good academics and athletics. Lastly, When Finny is dead, Gene realizes that the only person that he was out to compete was dead and it was all because of him. During Finny’s funeral he says to himself, “I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family’s strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case” (194). Gene knows that Finny’s death was when he breaks his leg, and he now has to accept the fact that he was the one who caused that’s so he would was the

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