A common challenge that everyone faces, is when they are confronted with the reality of their situation, it can often trigger one of two reactions; one is to either dig in and understand the situation and the other is to resist, and ignore it. A Separate Peace written by John Knowles, shows in depth the constant mindset of a 16-year-old boy, Gene, at a boarding school called "Devon" in New England. Throughout Gene's experience at Devon, he meets his best buddy Finny; Who puts reality away and goes into his own world. With Gene finding envy to be included in Finny's world, Gene finds himself stuck in the middle of Finny's world where the truth may just kill you. Without Finny being able to accept the truth, and face reality none of the events…
The story starts with two sisters, Lynn And Katie, with their happy family living in Iowa. The plot is well described and gives readers thorough details of both the characters personalities and their behaviour. Cynthia Kadohata focuses on writing about the relationship of Katie and her family, and how she and Lynn would have fun together. The book involves a lot of conversing between characters, allowing us to understand more of the feelings of different people.…
Gene Forrester is the main character in the deeply moving novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles. The book starts out with Gene as an adult looking back at his time spent as a teenager at Devon. Gene is a really smart, un-athletic kid who is best friends with a kid named Finny who seems to get away with everything. Gene is the smart kid, and Finny is the athletic kid that everyone loves including the teachers. Throughout the novel Gene looks back to the tree where he shook Finny off and he broke his leg. If Finny were to narrate this story it would be from a sense anger and confusion, not a sense of guilt and shame like Gene.…
her journey toward self realization. She is forbidden to marry because of a long held…
Paranoia, betrayal, competition; two boys by the names Gene and Phineas fight for the number one spot in their friendship. Yet there a slight plot twist, this is all an illusion in Gene’s mind. There is not really any competition, nor any paranoia in their friendship; only in Gene’s perspective. In the intriguing novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene’s ulterior motives disrupt the healthy friendship both he and Phineas contain. This type of mind shows a difference between Gene’s and Phineas’s character. Even throughout this story, principles of contrast are shed to reveal one’s true characteristics.…
The relations between sisters are as strong as a husband wife relation. Hattie, Min’s sister comes back from Paris and sees things different. Her sister is in hospital, and her kids are immature. Min is so…
Gene Forrester, the narrator of A Separate Peace, showed the greatest innocence in the start of the book. At the beginning of the novel, the young Gene stood unconcerned and self-absorbed, by the tree that will test his true nature. Gene's innocence in the opening represented a childlike happiness in conformity. By obeying the rules -- occasionally rebelling only through mild sarcasm -- Gene maintained a comfortable life, predictable and unthreatening. Finny was one of the main reasons that Gene lost his innocence. Finny forced Gene to break the rules and do things such as go to the beach (46) -- students at Devon were supposed to remain on campus at all times -- and help to start the first Super Suicide Society (31): a group that meets every night and jumps off a branch into the river, something Gene would never have done on his own. If Gene hadn’t expanded…
“Regan is an example of a sister that goes above and beyond the expectations of any sister. Regan has unconditional love for her brother Liam, and she is able to convey that as a child. Most of the time, though, these siblings have a mutually supportive relationship, even if Regan is uneasy when she thinks about Liam "transitioning," becoming a woman on the outside as well as on the inside. This positive relationship is essential to Liam, who is sometimes teased at school and often bullied at home by their macho father, who embraces traditional gender roles and constantly pressures Liam to be more masculine” (Piehl). Regan’s her sisters’ keepers who hides her own pain to take on…
Gene and Finny’s codependency is ended after Finny’s sudden death. Gene starts to re-examine himself, his thoughts and his emotions. Finally Gene puts things into perspective (Slethaug). Gene’s life from the start of his friendship with Finny has revolved around Finny. Everything he did, felt, thought about regarded Finny. His goal of becoming best in the class, and his envy were the result of Finny. Finny was the column, the foundation that supported and shaped his life. The foundation crumbles away with Finny’s death and Gene’s life comes crashing down. He can no longer depend on Finny to dictate his emotions, his thoughts and to serve as an idol he must surpass. With Finny gone, Gene now sees the foolishness and illusion he had been living in and the reality of life. He realizes that many of the enemies he had seen were the product of his own fear. He knows that Finny was a genuine and true friend who meant the best for him. Gene realizes that fear of everything had led to his seeing enemies in friends and that it was harmful. He sees that his fear had led him to feel threatened by a fearless Finny and his jealousy. His fear had made him feel that everyone was out to get him. Most importantly this fear had led him to seriously cripple Phineas and in the end led to Finny’s death. His guilt at having had a direct role in Finny’s death leads to him seeing the illogicality of fearing the world, the unknown, the imaginary enemy. He has escaped from his fear of the world, and matured into an adult in the process. Only now when he no longer fears anything or anyone, can Gene focus on himself and forge an identity. Only now when he does not see in everyone some quality that he lacks can he truly sees his own strengths and vulnerabilities and take them lightly. Gene can focus on forging his own identity when he other people’s identities no longer interest him. Phineas teaches Gene that in this world…
The flashbacks in My Sister’s Keeper are a significant part of the story. Throughout the novel these flashbacks allow the reader to connect with character’s memories from the past. As readers learn these memories, they are able to interpret character’s emotions. By understanding a character’s personal experience, their actions and thoughts are better understood by the reader. After all, one’s past leads them to who they become. For example, Anna’s intentions are to stay calm and collective while filing for medical emancipation. When she remembers a good time she had with her sister in the hospital, she becomes emotional. Because of the flashback she has, readers can understand that she slightly loses her cool because the two of them are very close and she cannot bear the thought of losing her.…
When an individual has a strong bond with a sibling who becomes sick, they feel a sense of responsibility in keeping them alive. The individual cherishes their sibling to the extent that they consider their sibling the centre of their world and their second half. When this loved one becomes sick and is diagnosed with acute depression, the individual’s immediate reaction is to do all that they can to help their sibling. Because the siblings share such a strong bond, the individual feels a sense of responsibility in helping and healing their sick sibling. This is portrayed through the relationship between Yolandi and her sister, Elfreida. Yolandi treasures her sister a lot and even goes so far as to label her, “her favourite person in the world,” and that she needed her “in order to survive.” When Elf becomes weary of life and is insistent on killing herself, Yoli desperately “wants her to stay” and to keep her alive.…
In Robert Olen Butler’s “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot,” the narrator attitude towards masculinity changes when he was a man he was aggressive, competitive with other men, and he did not express his feelings but when he becomes a bird he becomes more vulnerable, less aggressive, and wants to speak but cannot. Once he becomes a parrot, he beings to realize how he was wrong as a man and all he wants to do is tell his wife that he is sorry but he cannot because he is limited with his words.…
When examining the mother’s body, Jerry and a local police officer named Todd, soon encounter the effects of this isolation as Nell begins violently kicking and screaming at the intruders in her secluded home. Unable to speak English, Nell has trouble understanding what the men are saying and can only respond herself with guttural noises, gestures and emotions. In order to make Nell more comfortable around him, Jerry returns regularly. In doing so it allows Nell to open up enough to try and communicate with him in her own way, and own language, which the doctor begins the task of deciphering. Jerry soon gains Nell’s trust and is able to communicate with her to a small extent; Nell calls Jerry her “Ga’inja” meaning her guardian angel that came out of nowhere. She looks at Jerry and Paula as a couple, a kind of parent relationship she looked up to. In this case, Nell was not given the opportunity to go to school and make friends as a child normally will, but was kept in isolation for around twenty-five years. With only her mother and dead twin sister as company Nell was unable to learn and develop emotionally. Consequently “children need friends for emotional growth” (Haaland, & Schaefer, 2009) in being unable to obtain friends as a child, she was not able to grow emotionally and had a maturity of a young…
She feels that she is a “burden” to him because of her “nervous troubles”. John seems to treat the narrator as if she really does have something wrong with her even though her “case is no serious”. He tells her that “nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fantasies”. He puts the narrator in a “nursery” as if she is a small child. He refers to her as a “blessed little goose”. He also tries to keep her away from all contact with people. He tells her that her baby makes her “so nervous” and when she wants her cousins to visit he tells her that “he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now”. The narrator describes the wallpaper as “torn off in spots and it sticketh closer than a brother,” which talks about her relationship with John which is strong but they still have a few problems. Also she says, “must have had perseverance as well as hatred” which means that she believes in John and thinks that he is doing what’s best for her however she does have a feeling of hatred sometimes for him because he keeps her locked in and doesn’t treat her as a normal…
War can seem like an all-consuming force of hate, death, and misery to the soldiers and citizens who must fight war’s wrath. However, to survive one must transcend the unspeakable horrors from the fighting. The French women of World War II who survived the war exemplify this transcendence. Left under the control of the Nazi occupation, these women had to protect their family and their morals. Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale addresses the topic of surviving war through the perspectives of sisters Isabelle and Vianne. Hannah’s depiction of the sisters gets described as “an emotional powerhouse that lays bare the human heart's capacity for courage, compassion and resilience” (Fulwood), in spite of World War II. The sisters overcome…