A Separate Peace Reflection

Humans innately need each other. There is an almost infinite amount of reasons to rely on someone else: to love, to hate, to love to hate, to get something, to boost our own egos, and pretty much any combination of these. Personally, I’ve been known to use people for utilitarian purposes, but like anyone else, I have had a number of close friends. And these friends, my accomplices, have adopted my mannerisms as I have adopted theirs. These people have formed my current self and continue to mold me as a person. In the novel, A Separate Peace, main character, Gene Forrester finds himself shaped by his friends, both in identity and action. The universal truth told by author, John Knowles, is people are tremendously influenced by the friendships …show more content…
In the beginning chapter of the novel, Gene, fifteen years in the future, reminisces about his past and his first thoughts are of the time he and Finny climbed a tree, the tree, and jumped into the river, beginning their club. Gene follows unquestioningly in Finny’s lead, describing their way, “I went along; I never missed a meeting. At that time it would never have occurred to me to say, ‘I don’t feel like it tonight,’ which was the plain truth every night. I was subject to the dictates of my mind, which gave me the maneuverability of a strait jacket. ‘We’re off, pal,’ Finny would call out, and acting against every instinct of my nature, I went without a thought of protest.” Gene cares very deeply for Finny, going along with him is natural, as natural as anything can get. This gets him into places he’d rather not be in, but as a teen, a child, he is easily pushed into the whims of his company. In the early stages of their lives, Finny does not think of how his actions reflect on Genes life, but then again, neither does Gene. These feelings of inequality, an imbalance in their relationship reach their zenith when Finny, as usual comes up with an idea, and Gene automatically follows. Gene fails a test, and being devoted to academics as he is, searches desperately for an answer to why. He falls to paranoia and his thought is: “Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies.” He rationalizes it in wild bounds, “That explained blitzball, that explained the nightly meetings of the Super Suicide Society, that explained his insistence that I share all his diversions,” and believes that Finny wants to keep him on equal ground. Gene, deludes himself and in his wild thoughts, finds Finny to be far more cold and calculating than he is. He