Rivalry In A Separate Peace

Deep within every person, there is a desire to be the best—a wish to be the best, the top, the crème de la crème. This wish for dominance radiates through almost every facet of the human experience, and thus brings rivalry and completion between people. In John Knowles book, A Separate Peace, Gene, the narrator, states that, “There are few relationships…not based on rivalry.” To a certain extent, this is true. Some relationships form and grow from the desire to win; however, there exist many relationships that are based on love, and even more so that are based on a mix of the two.

Rivalry has firmly seated itself in the human experience and will undoubtedly forever perch there for the world to see. One can easily peer into their surroundings and find examples of enmity. Gene Forrester, a central character and the narrator in A Separate Peace, positions himself as a rival of Finny, his roommate and friend. Gene, jealous of Finny’s natural athleticism and genial personality, allows his hatred to fester and grow, rotting him away from the inside out, until this scarlet loathing causes him to joust Finny from a tree, thus shattering Finny’s athleticism

forever. The enmity radiating through Gene even leads him to believe that Finny is equally as rivalrous as he is. He states, “We were even after all, even in enmity. The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all” (53). Gene’s relationship with Finny is based on rivalry. There is no friendliness or affection. There is no understanding or love. There is only jealously and uncertainty. The natural rivalry of human nature grips Gene in unrelenting hands.
Unfortunately, the jealous rivalry of life never fully ends. From the hormone enflamed competitions of youth to the wealth chasing envy of adulthood, rivalry is engrained in human nature. In fact, this rivalry is so ingrained that people even team up to defeat rivals. Think of any sports team or debate club—their relationship with fellow competitors is one of fierce competition. Even familial relations are not free from rivalry. The bond of brothers, the bond Jacob and Esau, forged in blood and tempered with love, is subject to rivalry.
Yet imagine if life was fill only with rivalry, if the only base for relationships was enmity.

Would any one sleep at night, or would they constantly watch their backs? Would there be any trust, and progress, any reason to work together for a common good? It is absurd to think that all, or even a majority of relationships are based on rivalry. If rivalry prevailed, if enmity dominated, the world would transform into a paranoid dungeon of hatred and spite, a place unfit to live and prosper in, a nightmare of crimson wounds and salty tears and gnashing teeth, with the wails of the lost and trampled piercing night and day for all of eternity. Happily, this is not the case. There is rivalry insofar that there is human nature. Yet, it is also human nature to love, protect, and seek relationships beyond those of

opposition.
The relationship of a mother and child bases itself on love and nurture, as does that of a father and child. True lovers so not love each other for completion, but for so much more noble and goodly things. Real friends stick together not out of rivalry, but out of liking and good-will. God does not love His children because He has something to compete with. He loves us because we are his dearly loved sons and daughters…
Finny does not view his friend Gene with enmity, but instead finds great comfort in Gene, even referring to as his best pal (48). Gene realizes Finny’s good-will soon after and states, “He [Finny] had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us” (59). Unfortunately for Finny, Gene’s realization fans the flames of enmity to a blazing conflagration, and Gene jousts the loving Finny out of a tree.
Finny, nevertheless, still believes Gene to be his best friend. Albeit one-sidedly, each of the boys feel these emotions of love and rivalry—Finny the former and Gene the latter—thus making their relationship more realistic and human. Relationships are a jumbled mass of emotions and actions. It is unrealistic to assume that relationships are only formed on rivalry or on love. Often, relationships are a complicated recipe, filled with ingredients both bitter and sweet, and tossed together by the fickle hands of life. Gene and Finny’s friendship, while complicated, testifies to the duality and unpredictability of relationships.
One’s life, a concoction of numerous relationships—some rivalrous, some loving, some a mix of both—will always have doses of enmity and friendship. There will be the winners and the losers, the bitter and the joyous, the friends and the foes, and, as always, both the desire to win and to love.