A Guilty Conscience In John Knowles A Separate Peace

The destruction of a guilty conscience In a separate peace by John Knowles, the authors uses internal and external conflict, irony, and tragic flaw, to show Gene’s struggle with conscience and guilt and how these feelings influenced his decisions. Gene made several bad decisions in the novel including spending the night on the beach with Finny instead of preparing for a trigonometry test, letting his feeling of jealousy take over and causing Finny to fall from the tree and break his leg and coming clean with the truth to Finny that he purposely bounced the limb so Finny would fall. Knowles provides an example of internal conflict when Gene states, “ I looked at the sky and the ocean and knew that it was around six thirty. The ride back to devon would take three hours, at least. My important test, trigonometry, was going to be held at ten o’clock.” (50) This shows conflict because Gene knows he should not have stayed at the beach, he should have went to take his important test. This explains conscience and guilt because his conscience is telling him to go back and when he doesn't he feels guilty and knows he had did wrong. …show more content…
This also supports the theme of conscience and guilt because his conscience told him to jounce the limb and caused Finny to fall out of of the tree even though he knew it was wrong, Gene’s guilt caught up with him through the rest of the novel and it absolutely destroyed him, he felt like a horrible person and a horrible