Friendship In Johnknowles A Separate Peace

What is friendship? Is it love, hate, caring or is it evil? Friendship is when you havesomeone in your life that knows you better then you know yourself.They will take position in acrisis;Friendship goes beyond spending time together. In A Separate Peace written by JohnKnowles, there are two boys in the beginning they started as friends that was ruined whenjealousy had taken over their relationship. Real friendship will last a long time, sometimes evenforever. What happens when they fall apart?There are two boys in the story one named Phineas, the other Gene. Phineas who goes byFinny. He is a young man full of energy, excitement, and love. He is kind, friendly, outgoing andreliable. He is good at sports and does not care much about his grades yet he is a leader.”Whenyou love something it loves you back in whatever way it has to love.” (pg:110)This quote showsthat Finny is a lover not a fighter. Gene is a young boy who moved to Devon High School,where Finney became his roommate. He gets good grades, he is shy as well as a follower. He isunreliable and most of all he is a backstabber. Finny and Gene became friends because Finnyinvited him to play blitz ball and to jump out of the tree. Before Gene knew it, he caught himselfbecoming friends with Finny. “Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this? Was hegetting some kind of hold over me?” (pg:17)Gene says this because he is doing things he doesnot want to because Finny is doing it. ‘“It's you pal,” “Finny said to me at last” “Just you and me.”’ (pg:125)This shows that the characters from the book are on the same page with theirrelationship.
Will it last?Some friendships have jealousy. Some jealousy is good and some can be bad. Jealousycan take over a friendship and that can be the end of it. However, in other situations, the jealousystops at a certain point. However, in Gene and Fanny’s situation the jealousy proceeded. ”I wasbeginning to see that Finny could get away with anything. I could not help envying him that alittle which was perfectly normal. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little.”(pg:18)Gene sees that Finn is getting away with everything, which makes him jealous.“This timehe wasn't going to get away with it I could feel myself becoming unexpectedly excited at that.”(pg:26)Gene was happy that Finny was going to be getting in trouble because he was veryjealous that he could not get away with things. So how long would this “friendship” last? Gene’s jealousy takes over and by this time, it is too late. Gene has turned evil and herealizes he has to take down who he thinks is an enemy, but little did he know his enemy wasn'tFinny. ”I never killed anybody and I never developed an interest level of hatred for the enemybecause my war ended before I ever put on a uniform I was on active duty all my time at school.I killed my enemy their.” (pg:204)Says Gene. This shows that gene had an enemy yet his realenemy was himself. Nevertheless, he realized that after the damage was done to Finny and it wastoo late.In the end, Gene was left lost because he had become a follower of Finny and since Finnyhad died Gene was left with tons of regret and sorrow because he is the one who is left withliving with the pain of hurting someone who cared about him. However, he did not know Finnycared about him until he had already hurt him. “So the more things remained the same the morethey changed after all.Nothing endures. Not love,not a tree,not even death by violence.” (pg:Says
Gene,This shows that he realized that things had changed a lot and after all of the damage wasdone things had changed more than Gene thought they would.
Furthermore, Gene and Finnystarted as friends they became best friends and in the end, they were enemies. A true friend issomeone who would not harm you on purpose and would not have regrets if something happenedto
you.