Friendship in A Seperate Peace

A detailed Summary of Friendship in A Seperate Peace

In John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace, friendship is a distinguished theme. Friendship is exhibited when two people share many common interests, do not turn on each other, and are not envious of each other. Due to the fact that Gene and Finny's relationship does not demonstrate any of these characteristics, they do not have an authentic friendship. In this book it appeared as if Gene and Finny had a genuine friendship due to the amount of time they spent together, yet they were never true comrades.

One characteristic of friendship is sharing common interests. Gene and Finny have interests that are completely opposite. On one hand, Gene enjoys and excels at school. Contrary to this fact, Finny enjoys and excels at any activity that requires courage-school didn't contain these characteristics for Finny. Neither Gene or Finny is skilled in the activities their counterpart is flawless in. Finny feels as if sports are the most important thing in life and sometimes tries to tear Gene away from his precious books. One day Finny tried to convince Gene, who was trying to catch up on trigonometry lesson that he had missed the day before when he and Finny had gone to the beach, to go outside onto the ban

Another characteristic of friendship is that you never do or say anything that will hurt your friend. One example of when Gene turned on Finny is when Finny asked Gene to come out- side to jump from the tree while Gene was studying. Gene thought Finny was trying to ruin his hopes of becoming valedictorian. Then when Gene and Finny climb to the top of the tree, Gene purposely jounces the branch and causes Finny to fall to the bank of the river shattering his leg. The accident resulted in the end of Finny's athletic career. This life changing event could be considered the beginning of the end of Finny's life. Another example of when Gene and Finny turned on each other was at the snowball fight. When Gene returned to Devon after his visit to Leper, he noticed that Finny had somehow engaged the entire senior class in a snowball fight. During the fight, Finny recruited Gene and some others as allies and Finny began to vacillate onto many different teams. At the end of the fight everyone turned on Finny, who had a broken leg, and buried him with snowballs. Who in their right mind would bury someone that had a broken leg in the cold wet snow? A good friend would protect you and try to help you out of the situation you have gotten yourself into. Not turn against you and leave you to fend for yourself.

A final trait of friendship is not to be envious of your friend. One example of envy between Gene and F

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Approximate Word count = 952
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English