A Separate Peace Chapter 18 Summary

In the beginning of chapter 11, Gene and Phinehas’s relationship look to be at its maximum potential. Finny is playing with people in a snowball fight, and Gene initially doesn’t want to play but Phineas persuades him to. They show their closeness by their ability to persuade each other to do things they wouldn’t, in their right mind, doing the first place. Gene expresses his concern when he asks Phineas if he should be playing in the first place. Later when Brinker comes to their room, he mentions the war and asks about Leper. Gene denies the war for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons is because he doesn’t want Phineas to join the war because he cares about him. And another reason is that he enjoys Phineas being dependent on him because of his injury. Later in the chapter, the boys are in the assembly hall being questioned about the accident. Finny tells the judges that he thinks Gene was at the bottom of the tree. Both know that they were both at the top of the tree but
don’t want the other to get in trouble. In the entire chapter, they show how they care for each other because of their close bond of friendship. Near the end of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12, Phineas falls down the stairs and breaks his leg for the second time.
After they take Phineas to the infirmary, gene follows to talk to Phineas. He must wait for the doctors to leave him so he can talk to him. He climbs up the side of the building to talk to him and is confronted with a mad Phineas. Phineas asks gene if he came to break something else on him. Gene apologizes to Phineas and leaves. Near the end of the chapter, Phineas tells gene that the reason he told him that there wasn’t a war was because he wasn’t accepted to any of them because of his leg. Gene tells Phineas that when they were on the tree limb, he had an impulse to shake the limb. Phineas, the loving friend that he is, forgives gene and tells him he believes him. Throughout the chapter they show in various ways their love for each other even at the end when Phineas dies. He says that Phineas passing makes him feel like he is at his own
funeral. Throughout chapter 11 and 12, Phineas is the main character even though the narration shifts between them. Gene shows himself as a caregiver and a follower to Phineas. Throughout the novel, gene finds Phineas very important to him and the same for Phineas. They both show the audience their true colors towards the end of the novel with Phineas hurting himself again and how both of them reacted to the situation. Gene proves to the audience that he is indeed a reliable author because he shows a vague amount of personal emotions and attempts to show other people’s emotions by stating their feelings as “mad” or “concerned” but scarcely saying any of his emotions even after Phineas dies. Being a reliable author involves not focusing mainly on a personal point of view but on others perspective on things