A Separate Peace Coming Of Age Analysis

A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a coming of age novel surrounding the experiences of a young boy from the South and his roommate while at boarding school. Gene Forrester is new to the boarding school culture, so when he arrives in his dorm room on the first day of summer term, he is shocked and in awe by his roommate, Phineas. Gene’s lack of self confidence is only made more obvious beside Finny, but this does not stop them from growing to be best friends. However, at boarding school the environment is extremely competitive, just like here at Hotchkiss, and it is hard to escape the competition between peers, and even your best friends. Adolescence is about finding yourself and creating an identity, but in a hyper competitive environment like Hotchkiss or Devon, this is a near impossible task. Competition, jealousy, and rivalry drive wedges between all relationships and push teenagers to become who they think they should be rather than who they actually are.
Every person, or at least every kid at boarding school, knows the
feeling of rivalry or competition towards others. This rivalry and competitive attitude prevents us from being able to understand others and ourselves, eventually leading to paranoia and hostility towards your competitor. The novel centers around Gene’s battle with paranoia and jealousy about his relation with Finny. At the end of chapter three, Finny breaks the school swimming record without any witnesses other than Gene. Finny tells Gene to keep quiet about the events, and Gene realizes that Finny’s desire to keep a secret about breaking the school record “made Finny seem too unusual for—not friendship, but too unusual for rivalry. And there were few relationships among us at Devon not based on rivalry” (45). Gene has a vague understanding at this point in the novel about the role of rivalry in relationships, and this realization foreshadows the demise of his friendship with Finny.
Finny is confident, easy going, spontaneous, and is the best athlete in school. Finny is everything that Gene is not. For this, Gene both loves and hates Finny; he finds that he and Phineas “are even already … even in enmity … both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone” (53). Gene is troubled by the confidence Finny has surrounding his identity, and thus becomes overwhelmed by feelings of resentment and jealousy, ultimately leading him to jounce the limb of the tree, causing Finny to fall and shatter his leg. Gene’s insecurity about who he is and his purpose at Devon is common amongst boarding school kids. From a young age, children are compared with their peers which often fosters jealousy and resentment in even the closest of relationships. Just as Gene’s discomfort causes him to create enemies and evil thoughts that don’t exist, boarding school kids have a hard time sustaining friendships through the competition.
After Finny’s fall, Gene begins to define himself in terms of his friend, ultimately becoming a part of him. On a phone call Finny tells Gene, “‘Listen, pal, if I can’t play sports, you’re going to play them for me,’” and in that moment Gene lost a part of himself to him and has “a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been [his] purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas” (85). For the rest of the novel, Gene spends his time trying to become Phineas, to the point that “Phineas has thought of [him] as an extension of himself” (180). The boys develop a codependency on each other; Finny relies on Gene to live vicariously through his athletic endeavors, while Gene relies on Finny for security of his own identity.
Ultimately, the feelings of enmity and jealousy evident in Finny and Gene’s relationship causes emotional destruction despite how close the two become after the accident.
It takes Phineas’s second accident for Gene to realize that he truly does love Finny and that nothing but Finny matters to him at this point. However, this realization comes too late. Gene’s jealousy which causes his friend to break his leg twice eventually leads to Finny’s death. In surgery, the marrow from Finny’s bone went through his bloodstream and caused his heart to stop. At this point, Gene realizes that his only enemy was himself and he finds that life has very little meaning without him. Gene “did not cry then or ever about Finny,” he didn’t cry even when he “stood watching him being lowered into his family’s strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston” because he “could not escape a feeling that this was [his] own funeral, and you do not cry in that case”
(194).
Boarding school culture is similar across the board. At both Hotchkiss and Devon competition and rivalry can cause people to falsely label true friends as enemies. At Devon, this typical aspect of boarding school culture is a central part of the plot. Both Gene and Finny suffered as a result of the rivalry and competition, and a potentially life-long friendship was ruined. At Hotchkiss, this same kind of rivalry causes friendships like that of Gene and Finny to fall apart. Although rivalry and competition is a natural and necessary part of life and development, too much can be wildly destructive, especially in adolescents.