Gene looked up to everything Finny did. Whatever Finny did, Gene felt that he needed to follow his lead and do the same thing. Finny easily convinced Gene to jump out of the tree after diving in the water.…
1) The main character of the book, A Separate Peace, is Gene Forrester. He is in the senior class at Devon. He is widely known as the smart student who is always on time to class and always does his school work. Gene is a good choice as the main character of this book, but if the author would have chosen Finny as the main character, the book would have been different. Finny leaves Devon for an amount of time because he breaks his leg. Therefore, if he was the main character, the book would not have been placed at Devon the whole time, it would have been placed at Finny's house for a short amount of time. The reader would have also been able to see what Finny was thinking when he first broke his leg and when he did it a second time. The two characters are similar, in the fact that, they both would not be where they are today without their friendship. They are also both very competitive with each other. Gene and Finny are different, in the fact that, Gene is shy while Finny is very outgoing. Finny is focused on athletics while Gene is focused on academics.…
Gene and Finny are the main characters of A Separate Peace and Gene also serves as the narrator and protagonist of this book. In the beginning of the novel Gene and Finny appear to have a perfect friendship, although Gene has many mixed emotions regarding Finny. It is clear from Gene’s praiseworthy description of Finny’s athleticism, charisma, and charm that Gene admires Finny. It is also these qualities that make Finny the competition. Although Gene is academically superior, Finny captivates everyone’s attention and is quite influential on those surrounding him. Because of Finny’s ability to strongly persuade his peers, Gene fears that Finny may have control over him, and later resents him for this. The idyllic friendship that is first introduced is overcome by Gene’s jealousy, and as a result Finny’s first accident occurs. But the main cause of Gene’s jealousy is not Finny’s athleticism or charisma; it is ultimately Finny’s goodness that serves as a catalyst for Gene’s jealousy.…
“A Separate Peace” by John Knowles takes place at Devon school during World War II. Narrated by Gene Forrester he tells the reader about his friendship with Phineas and how it ended.Gene becomes paranoid and lets his fear and jealousy get the better of him causing him to make a terrible mistake. Human emotions and suspicions can cause people to make irrational decisions.…
Nancy Mairs writes in her article “Trying Truth” about the struggles of writing an autobiography and dealing with issues of remembering. She says the quote “we are each the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, and no one of us can authentically tell another’s story” when she is talking about how she and her husband have different recollections of the same event (91). This quote means that we each have our own way of understanding the things that we do and the events that occur in our life. History is made up of these various accounts and the goal of historical study is to try to find the objective truth among them. Mairs seems to view the understanding of an incident as purely subjective; that there is no objective truth.…
Through out the novel, A Separate Peace, by Jonathan Knowles, a conflict between innocence and guilt is revealed. Gene Forrest, the narrator of the story returns to his school Devon, thirty years later to face the haunting memories of a past love-hate relationship. Though many people would argue the fact that Gene's character was not redeemed by the end of the novel, I on the other hand personally hold the opinion that Gene's character was.…
In a letter to his wife, Robert E. Lee said, “What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world” (Lee). This destruction can be seen in John Dante, the soldier from Cynthia Rylant’s I Had Seen Castles, and Harold Krebs, the veteran from Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Soldier’s Home.” Although John and Krebs face their suffering in different ways, these battle-scarred protagonists change in unique and similar ways. Upon returning from the war, John moves away from his home to find peace while Krebs stays home. Despite where the soldiers are geographically, both are in a new battle against their own thoughts; John and Krebs suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) forcing them to react…
In the novel 'Talking In Whispers' by James Watson, it is about a teenager trying to get his own life back in a world where people are deceiving and unfair. It is an exciting and uncompromising political thriller, that voices out things about certain parts of the world dealing with human rights in an everyday crisis. In this analysis, I have analyzed several fractured narratives in the novel. Andres is the main character in the novel - and is someone that the writer wants to sympathize. Therefore, the writer used a fractured narrative so that he could create tension and sympathy in his novel.…
“This novel demonstrates that telling the truth is not always the right thing to do.” Discuss…
Then he brings up another patient who was traumatized post war, who believed that he hadn’t killed any innocent villagers during the war. But proved to be wrong, he had in fact convicted several unnecessary kills. Again he proves that although memories are lost, they are in fact real and can be used as evidence.…
Something happens when we as readers start to sense that there is a case of an unreliable narrator – we stop reading the story and start reading the narrator or writer. This can make the story more complicated, confusing, and ultimately thrilling, specifically in the case of the famous poet Edgar Allan Poe. In Poe’s Annabel Lee and Tell Tale Heart, he gives us reason to doubt the sanity and truthfulness of his narrators. The deeper we look into his two poems, the more complex and even psychotic our narrators reveal to be.…
Among the challenges of writing such stories is authors’ exclusive reliance on personal memories. The problem arises when conversations begin. One can hardly remember each and every sentence as spoken. Years back when veteran journalist and a one time minister Ahadou Saboure wrote his memoir, some of the criticisms revolved around the conversations…
All Quiet on the Western Front is—indirectly—an autobiography of Remarque. When going through traumatic events such as war and the deaths of both his best friend and his mother, novelizing his thoughts became a very therapeutic way to cope. “There is no doubt that Remarque’s books always dealt—either directly or indirectly—with subject matter that he knew from personal experience or that had at least been triggered by events affecting him personally” (Wagener…
It is a story that provides the ultimate explanation of how two different people who are witnesses to a crime give completely different psychological recollections of the same event. The author reminds us that truth depends on the telling. Someone must step forward and tell that truth.…
Today has been eye-opening in positive and negative ways. Charlie and Molly have been caught secretly sending each love letters! At least I know what the real world is like, that I can’t trust anyone with my feelings.…