Coming Of Age In John Knowles A Separate Peace

Coming of age can be difficult but it’s full of maturity and responsibilities. A Separate is a novel about the relationship between the two boys. The boys are different in many ways. Gene is a lonely person and Finny is a daredevil athlete. But what happened to these boys one summer? In this novel, we see Gene going through an extreme “Coming of Age”. Some of these coming of age experiences include: how Gene injured Finny’s leg, Gence telling the truth to Finny, and how he killed Finny.
Gene jealousy of Finny perfection had caused to make him fall off the tree. Everybody like Finny because his charismatic and his innocence. Knowles states, “ He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he. I couldn’t stand this. . . . Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb,” . This explains that the competition between him and Finny break down as if he never want to compete with anyone else. We can see his jealousy of Finny. Gene flaws led him to have an evil mind and hurt his best friend.
Gene finally gather up his courageous to tell Finny what really happened to him. Knowles states “ Finny turned toward me. "You were down at the bottom, weren't you? He asked, not in the official courtroom tone he had used before, but in a friend's voice,” pg. 170. In this point of the chapter, Finny was too scared of best friend betrayal because he already know the truth. For instance, Gene Forrester was denying because he was extremely nervous. He try to turn things other way around instead of admitting the truth because he already know the truth and yet still be friend with