Gene Vs. Finny (A Separate Peace)
A comparison/contrast of two characters of the book A Separate Peace by John Knowles.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles is an excellent book. It portrays the life of teenagers during the Second World War, and how they had to live knowing that after high school they had to go into the service. This book also showed how they competed, which led to the loss of good friends. Out of the whole book, it focuses on mainly two characters, Phineas (a.k.a. Finny) and Gene. I will compare and contrast them.
Gene is a smart, normal student. He is the typical teenager at Devon, the all male boarding school in New Hampshire that this story is based on, studying, competing, and just being a teen. But things happen in the story that makes you change your mind about him, mainly his relationship between him and Finny. Jealousy overtook Gene’s mind, eventually making have bad choices, like pushing Finny out of a tree, which led to his death. At the end Gene was a mixed up person, full of guilt and sadness.
Finny was the all around athlete, always winning trophies, and competing in events. When it came to work, school work that is, he just passed. He claimed that he just can’t learn when it really was his choice of not doing well. He didn’t want to be good, because he was jealous of Gene for being good, and didn’t want to show that jealousy. After doing a lot of jumps out of a tree into the river, Finny had the idea to do a double jump, which in one way or another led to his death. Gene subconsciously shuffled his feet, knocking Finny off of the tree, breaking his bones, and ending his career in sports and in the army. Finny wanted to be good in sports, but not praised, and he wanted to join the army, even though he said there was no war. Overall Finny was an athletic person that wanted to be like everyone else, while at the same time stand out in the crowd. He wanted to be himself.
Together the pair makes a good team. They always team up when doing things, making the super secret suicide society idea, and of the tree jumping altogether. They always shared rooms, and even though Gene knocked Finny off of the tree, they were friends, for a while anyways. They were both jealous of each other, but that was expected as they were both good in different ways. Finny was good in sports, while Gene was good at school work. Finny was good with convincing people, and Gene was good at thinking up things to tell people, more like explanations. Overall they were the same because of jealousy and their extreme abilities at school subjects.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles, and the characters in it are very confusing, and interesting at the same time. The differences between Gene and Finny made the story move along in a sort of conflicting way, always showing the differences between the two while they are having good times. Gene and Finny would always be different and the same at the same time, even if the story didn’t end the way it did. I believe that not only the jealousy bringing them together made the story good, but also the fact that they were better at each others weaknesses. In the end, those two factors made A Separate Peace a great story.
Liked it
its seems like a 2nd grader wrote this
dosnt even go along with the main happenings of the book.
not good at all… needs more context out of the book …there were more things that happened then falling out of the tree
helped me with my essayy too.
Meh,I just needed an idea, this little tidbit gave me it.
It really is poorly written………..
Eh, this person needs to acutally use the book before they write about it. This is VERY poorly written…..
i fricken loved it, ti majorly helped me with my comparison essay.
not good. needs more examples from the book, not just how you felt about it.
it gave me an idea for my essay and got my english teacher to suck my dick at lunch so im good!
for starters he didnt shuffle his feet he jounced the limb and it was on purpose. 2nd finny wasnt jealous of gene in fact at one part gene asks finnny what he though of them both being top of the school and finny replied he wouldnt be phased at all
Lmao wow im surprised you guys are all about my essay for 10th grade English. If you were in my class that year you would have done the essay the same way. It was an easy class so i wrote dumb and quick. It does explain the book well for what it is so don’t complain. You obviously read the whole thing and care about it enough to comment on it lol.
UMMMM!!!! THIS SUCKED! One he did not shuffle his feet, he did bounce the limb or in the book it says jounced… and I do think this was made by a second grader… And also it says that he wanted to join the army, yes but did accept the fact eventually, even though in this it says he never did accept it. This is very poorly written and get two thumbs down from me.
And 10TH GRADE???? I HAVE IT IN 7TH!!!!!