Power, the perception of superiority over another human, is the source of many conflicts between people. Feeling inferior causes people to act beyond their normal personality. John Knowles strongly demonstrates this point in his work, A Separate Peace. In the relationship between Finny and Gene, Gene sets himself up to be inferior in the balance of power which motivates him to act irrationally to take power back from Finny. Knowles deliberately juxtaposes Gene’s social awkwardness to Finny’s natural athleticism and charisma to suggest an imbalance of power between the two boys. Set in Devon School, described as “very athletic” (Knowles 13), Finny, “an extraordinary athlete…the best athlete in the school,” (16) establishes himself to be popular, tilting the balance of power. Stating there is no one “in this school – in this world – whom [he] could trust” (53), Knowles introduces Gene as a distrustful individual. Gene’s hesitant nature lets the animated Finny take charge of their relationship. To create power imbalance, the author purposefully creates Gene and Finny with wildly different personalities. Knowles further manipulates Finny and Gene’s relationship in their escapades together. At the beach, Finny shares his inner emotions with Gene, an act likened to “the next thing to suicide” (48). Surprised, Gene attempts to share his own feelings, but hesitates and does not follow through. Knowles uses Gene’s hesitant, distrusting nature, to suggest dishonesty in his relationship with Finny. In the scene where Finny saves Gene from falling out of the tree, Knowles continues to imply power disparity. Realizing that “Finny had practically saved [his] life” (32), Gene feels personal debt to Finny. This widens the power gap even further ... ... middle of paper ... ...er, Gene’s activities demonstrate gradual escalation. Obsessed with Finny, Gene seeks to transform himself into Finny to finally be equals. Gene sets himself up to become the inferior in his relationship with Finny because of his distrusting nature, but his yielding to Finny’s power motivates him to no longer be the lackey but rather the leader. In Gene’s quest for dominance, his initial steps are passive; he seeks to portray Finny as an antagonist and look better in comparison. Gene’s plan escalates as he takes away power from Finny physically. This proceeds into an obsession with him, convincing Gene that the only way to gain power is to become Finny. Knowles uses Gene’s escalation of his plot for power to warn readers to be wary of those seeking power. Through Gene, he advises the reader that individuals who seek power will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.
First, I believe that Gene and Finny were not sincerely friends throughout the novel due to their relationship being driven by competitiveness. Along with the competitive atmosphere came jealously, envy and enmity. Gene created a rivalry between him and Finny. Since Finny was
Chapter 7: After the Fall also claims that Gene “wants to become what Finny was as a means to escape from himself”, however, the novel presents evidence that Finny was the one who tried to become Gene. The literary analysis claims Gene’s signing up for extracurricular activities and his wearing of Finny’s shirt suggest that Gene is
Rolf Carle’s father in Eva Luna parallels this nature of power. Lucas Carle has total control over his wife and children, to the point where he treats his wife more like a prostitute, and his children hide from him when he comes home because they fear a beating from him. It is this fear of being punished if one does not obey that gives Lucas Carle his power, and as in the case of the General, if the only reason to give in to someone’s power is fear of the consequences if one doesn’t, then this power gains no respect from those it affects.
Many people who have power and authority have the ability to have a strong influence over the behavior of others. They show great dominance over them, and have a lot of say in their actions. And many characters demonstrate this in John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men. The novel stresses us to view the advantage power has in its characters’ actions and
Power helped some people in this novel by helping them do what was right. Like George, he was the new guy, the guys still accepted him because he seemed like a kind and trustworthy person. So he never really had problems with people except Curley but Curley was just that kind of person because he thought he was better than everyone else and bigger. He also had power though since his dad owned the farm he practically could do whatever he wanted so no one really wanted to mess with them because if he wanted to he could get people canned. His dad had power over everything since he owned the farm he controlled who worked there and who did not and what kind of jobs people would do. Slim had power too because he was kind of like a leader and he was a nice guy. He was also very respectful and knew where his place was and did not run into trouble since no one had a reason to mess with him. Carlson had some power to in this book when he took control and killed Candy’s dog, “I’ll put the old devil out of his misery right now and get it over with.” (47)
Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affects him on a personal level throughout the novel.
Gene symbolizes inner war, while Finny symbolizes a sense of peace. Gene is the jealous one in the friendship, and he is also the one to immediately jump to conclusions. Finny is a little stubborn and manipulative, but he tries his hardest to be a good person. An example to prove this statement is when Gene suddenly assumed that Finny was trying to sabotage his achievements during school. When Gene reacted to this by being jealous of Finny, it showed that he was the type to make assumptions off of little factual evidence. Gene’s jealousy and hatred towards Finny resulted in him purposefully inflicting harm on Finny. Finny is the type of boy to try and talk himself out of anything, making him very manipulative and liked around Devon. The book causes the reader to believe that Finny was liked by most of his classmates and his teachers, this giving him an advantage when he tried to get out of trouble. The book gives us many examples of this. One being when Finny was late because of jumping off of the limb, and another when he talked himself out of trouble for wearing a pink shirt and a tie as a belt.
As they change and develop throughout the book, the meaning of the work as a whole changes with it. Due to one event that occurs while the boys are at the beach, the reader is offered a deeper glimpse into the thoughts and morals of Gene in relation to Finny. While at the beach, Finny tells Gene that he is his “best pal” and Gene thinks to himself, “I should have told him then that he was my best friend also and rounded off what he had said. I started to; I nearly did. But something help me back. Perhaps I stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.” (Knowles 48) Before the boys trip to the beach, the reader didn’t know much about Finny in a deeper emotional way. However, after he opens up to Finny about their relationship the story changes direction. As Gene put it, expressing as much emotion as Finny did is considered social suicide at Devon. In other words, it can be compared to Finny telling Gene that he “loved” him. Before, Gene never really thought of Finny in a deeper sense besides a friend from school. Once Finny tells Gene that he is his “best pal”, Gene’s thoughts towards Finny changes. However, as seen further into the book, this didn’t transform Finny into Gene’s best
...conveys how authority and the ability to obey its power can enable the characters rise above internal and external forces.
In the early pages of the novel, Finny confesses that Gene is his best friend. This is considered a courageous act as the students at Devon rarely show any emotion. And rather than coming back with similar affection, Gene holds back and says nothing. Gene simply cannot handle the fact that Finny is so compassionate, so athletic, so ingenuitive, so perfect. As he put it, "Phineas could get away with anything." (p. 18) In order to protect himself from accepting Finny's compassion and risking emotional suffering, Gene creates a silent rivalry with Finny, and convinced himself that Finny is deliberately attempting to ruin his schoolwork. Gene decides he and Finny are jealous of each other, and reduces their friendship to cold trickery and hostility. Gene becomes disgusted with himself after weeks of the silent rivalry. He finally discovers the truth, that Finny only wants the best for Gene, and had no hidden evil intentions. This creates a conflict for Gene as he is not able to deal with Finny's purity and his own dark emotions. On this very day Finny wants to jump off of the tree branch into the Devon river at the same time as Gene, a "double jump" (p. 51), he says, as a way of bonding. It was this decision, caused by Finny's affection for Gene and outgoing ways that resulted in drastic change for the rest of his life.
Phineas represents the peace that is lost as Gene grows more and more anxious, making it nearly impossible to get rid of the enemy inside of himself. Gene and Finny enter their summer with the idea that their friendship is flawless. At the beginning of the story, Gene seems to accept Finny’s superior athletic ability, but he hated the fact that he feels like Finny is flaunting his abilities. Finny saves Gene when he grabs Genes hand to keep him from falling when he loses his balance in the tree. Gene feels that he should not feel inclined to show gratitude toward Phineas, because he does not like feeling clumsier or lesser than Finny. Instead, he blames his misfortune in the tree on Phineas. Finny is also the leader of the duo in their friendship. The balance of the friendship is maintained when Phineas thinks of something to do, and Gene goes along with it.
Superficially, it can be said that due to Finny’s ruse about the war, Gene became very athletic.... ... middle of paper ... ... Leper becomes partially insane and much more assertive.
Gene jounces a limb of the tree he and Finny were standing on, causing Finny to fall and break his leg. Gene's jealousy of Finny's perfection causes him to have childish feelings of resentment and hatred. After Finny's leg was broken, Gene realized "that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between" (Knowles 51) him and Finny. Gene looked at himself and became conscious of what a terrible, self-absorbed friend he had been. Understanding there was no competition caused him to discard the majority of his feelings of jealousy. Getting rid of these feelings made him grow-up because he was no longer spending countless hours believing a childish game was being played between Finny and him. Gene began to understand more of Finny's goodness and love towards all, making him strive to be more like Finny.
Characters have played a large role in setting the theme of abusive power; they gain power over a group of individuals and misguide them. One obvious example from Lord Of the Flies was Jack. Towards the beginning of the novel, when the “elections” for the leader of the group took place Jack tried to get power. “‘I ought to be chief,’ said Jack with simple arrogance, ‘because I’m the chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C sharp’” (Golding 22). After losing the election to Ralph, he became the head of the hunters. Here he abused the miniscule powers given to him over the small group of boys formerly known as the “choir”. Jack’s influence possibly corrupted the minds of the young boys and made them into cold blooded killers going from killing pigs for food to harming humans for enjoyment. “The circle moved round. Robert squealed in mock terror then in real pain… Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing his knife.” (Golding 114). The significance of this was that it was the first major point that lead to the collapse of society on the island. Jack thought that Ralph did not appreciate what he was doing for the group by gett...
From the displays of power that have been shown through out this essay, we see that this story is a story about power. Power is the story is primarily about peoples need for some small amount of power to survive in life and to feel that hey have a purpose within their society which every society it may be whether its is Gilead or Nazi Germany or modern day Britain.