A Separate Peace Finny Character Analysis

In today’s world, people are constantly competing to be better than their peers in almost every situation. In each competition between people, there is always going to be one clear victor. Sure, the victor may have emerged solely from the competition, but he or she may still not be better than everybody else. It is how they carry out every opportunity for greatness that determines if they can be considered “the best”. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Finny is motivated to be the best in the school through his sports and his ability to charm his way out of difficult situations. Finny motivates himself to be the best athlete in the school through his sports. Gene expresses this motivation when he says, “Even as a Lower Middler Phineas had …show more content…
Finny slides his way out from trouble by asking questions like “What if they lower the draft age to seventeen?" (22). Finny proposes this question to Mr. Prud’homme in order to provide an excuse for jumping out of the tree and missing dinner. Mr. Prud’homme’s positive response to this answer causes Finny to continue to get his way out of these situations. Finny also gets out of trouble by making others laugh, when “sour and stern Mr. Patch-Withers had been given a good laugh for once, and he (Finny) had done it! He broke into the charmed, thoughtless grin of a man fulfilled” (28). Finny breaks the school rules by wearing a tie as a belt, yet still causes one of the sternest teachers to laugh about it. By making teachers laugh, Finny is able to create a more personal level with them, which leads him to being regarded higher than other students at Devon. His ability to create good excuses and make funny jokes in order to relate to teachers is one of the many ways Finny slivers his way out of trouble at Devon. Finny motivates himself to be the best through his sports and his ability to get out of hard situations. Finny’s motivation proved throughout the book how much better he was than all of the other students at these two things. Nobody becomes the best by doing something the same way everybody else does. People in this world need motivation to help themselves become what they want to be. Whether it is becoming great in athletics or finding ways out of difficult situations, there are hundreds of different ways for people to motivate themselves to become the