A Separate Peace Friendship Analysis

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A Friendship Can Not Stand A Greater Force John Knowles novel A Separate Peace is well written to demonstrate how no friendship can remain intact when faced with a greater force. The main concept of the story is when one of the characters finds himself in a dilemma that will haunt him for the rest of his life. In the book, the three characters Gene, Leper, and Finny are torn apart from each other due to the effects of jealousy, conspiracy, and the two wars that are going on, the domestic war at Devon and WWII. Conspiracy between Gene and Leper leads to breaks in their close friendship. The first crack is when Gene begins to reason with himself if Finny really means to be his friend. He ponders as to why he creates the Super Suicide Society…show more content…
One of the characters, Leper, is sent to training camp and develops a mental disability that affects the closest people around him. When Gene rescues Leper at his home he tells Gene of his disturbing visions of male officer’s faces turning into females and soldiers detached limbs being used to sweep up the floor. Gene begins to yell at Leper to stop apprising him of his allusions but Leper acts as if he does not hear him. This takes a toll on Gene who then kicks Leper out his chair, demonstrating how WWII is tearing Gene apart from his conscience, “Do you think I want to hear every gory detail! Shut up! I don’t care! I don’t care what happened to you, Leper. I don’t give a damn! Do you understand that? This has nothing to do with me! Nothing at all! I don’t care!” (Knowles 151), Gene saying this had a really hard impact on him afterward asking himself what is happening to him. In The final sentences of the book Gene realizes that even though with his intention to enlist in the army he had a series of personal battles that made up his own war, “Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform” (Knowles 204), this quote is the symbol for all the times he is fighting with Finny, Leper, and as well as other minor characters. Gene, Leper, and Finny were broken apart from each other because of the wars that they were battling…show more content…
Finny’s athleticism Gene look up to him even though Gene was the one who everyone up until that point was looked up to by everyone else. When Finny breaks Devon’s 50-meter time record Gene begins look up to him as an idol as well as become jealous of him because he is better than him in something. At Devon Finny is looked up to by several of the students, before he was the idol for many on the students, now that he has competition he has rivalry as well as jealousy. Gene’s ability to be creative and have the gift of being able to get away with anything even further makes Gene envy him. When Gene evaded being punished for wearing his tie as a belt Finny says, “it was hypnotism. I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little” (Knowles 25) Gene realizes that he can talk his way out of
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