A Separate Peace Character Analysis

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out” (Walter Winchell). This quote is portrayed in the book of A Separate Peace through the characters of Gene and Phineas. Friendship is a common theme in the book of A Separate Peace. It causes conflict between characters and it also causes characters to change as a person throughout the book. Gene is the narrator of the book and he causes many conflicts with his best friend, Phineas or commonly called Finny, and also changes as a person throughout these conflicts. Over the course of the book A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene Forrester changes as a person due to certain thoughts, actions, and feelings; he influences relationships with people in a negative way, and teaches the importance of not being jealous towards others. At the beginning, Gene makes bad decisions and affects people in his life doing so, but by the end, he becomes aware of his envy and desire to be successful like Finny and how he doesn't like Finny due to his athletic ability that Gene never had. Gene makes a bad decision at the beginning of the story by making Finny fall out of the tree and fall into the river bank due to jealously. Gene says “Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb” (Knowles 60). This
Gene changes as a person due to many things like friendship. Friendship is a important theme in this book and the ways friendship is affected is common due to Finny and Gene’s thoughts, actions, and feelings. Friends are always there for you when you need them most, even if you go through rough times they will love you support you through anything no matter what, even if no one else is there for