A Separate Peace Central Theme

The central theme of John Knowles' A Separate Peace is mainly based on the friendship between the two main characters, Phineas and Gene. Phineas also known as Finny, is "a handsome athlete and Gene is a lonely person. The novel begins with Gene as an adult visiting his old high school. As he is walking along the school grounds he recalls the very first time that he and Phineas climbed and jumped off of their special tree. Gene has some friends at Devon but he has only one best friend Phineas also called Finny and Gene really gets along with him but Gene has a different point of view of Finny than everybody else at Devon. Gene they started out as friends but their relationship gets worse because Gene gets the wrong impression of Finny. “Come

on, let’s go. We’ve got to be the you never know maybe he will do it the time. ‘Oh for God sake I slammed the French book “what’s the matter? What a Performance! His face was completely questioning and candid. To me in this quote Gene thinks that Finny is trying to take him away from his studies and is trying to get ahead of him. In my opinion If Gene was really a good friend he would have never had these thoughts about Finny or a least Gene would have known that’s how Finny acts. In the same sense Holden does the same thing to the people that care or like him as a friend. (Knowles Pg. 57).
In the beginning chapter Finny was always trying to convince Gene to go along with all his activities such as going to the beach or playing blitz ball.

He tries mentally reason what Finny’s motivation are behind his ways. Gene also is really trying not to believe that someone could be as carefree and happy-go-lucky as Phineas is. In the book it seemed like Finny which was very confident and outgoing. Also Gene refuses to own up to being jealous as his real enemy. He puts his feelings onto Finny his closest friend. The first time Finny broke his leg Gene was scared to confess to himself about why he shook the limb. Brinker was one of their classmate. Then Brinker took Gene and Finny to a place to have another mock trial and Gene was scared that the truth was going come out. So suddenly Leper came out and told all the boys how Gene shook the limb on purpose. Then Finny looked shocked to hear what he said so he hurried out of the mock trial and he didn't notice that he left in such a rush that suddenly he falls down the stairs and breaks his legs again. One reason for Gene doing that was because he was jealous of Finny because Finny was an awesome athlete student at Devon. Gene wanted to apologize but the doctor had came in so he couldn't tell him. Gene was guilty and he met with Finny before his surgery. Gene was guilty for ending Ginny's sport dreams and worse of all his

life.
At first Finny didn't know that Gene snooker the limb on purpose and not by accident. So when Finny was resting in bed Gene confessed to him and when he confessed Finny and told him not to talk of it and that it couldn't be true. Last but not least Finny was finally getting ready to have his surgery on his leg but suddenly he died and the cause ofnhim dying was cause he had bone marrow that's also called an bone disease.