A Separate Peace Archetypes

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Which personality is more successful in life, an optimist or a realist? It depends on how a person defines being successful. Optimists utilize the luxury of looking on the bright side and they are often blissfully ignorant, whereas realists take the slightly grimmer and serious path. John Knowles highlights these ideas in A Separate Peace with two of his characters, Gene Forrester and Phineas (Finny). Knowles describes Gene as an introvert and intellectual whereas Phineas is an extrovert and athletic. The two characters have different perspectives and the one is more likely to prevail. In Knowles' novel, A Separate Peace, Gene's realistic viewpoint is better suited to be successful in this world than Phineas' naïve outlook because Gene's way …show more content…

Even as negative as these feelings are, they still prove to help people become successful in this world as they navigate through tough times and they use these feelings to re-inspire them to work harder and achieve more. Furthermore, Phineas' viewpoint is too innocent to last in the real world. For example, Finny views the world as he views sports which Gene explains as, "Everyone always won at sports. When you played a game you won, in the same way as when you sat down to a meal you ate it. It inevitably and naturally followed. Finny never permitted himself to realize that when you won they lost" (27). As idealistic as this sounds, it is not plausible to live by this statement in the real world and expect to succeed. Since Finny refuses to see logic in this statement but Gene understands the underlying problem with it, Gene is more likely to survive and succeed in this world because he understands not everything can be the perfect version that a person wishes it to be. Phineas' pure heart and innocent intentions are good in theory but they do not last in this world which demands more cunning and strategic motivations such as the ones Gene

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