Gene Forrester's A Separate Peace

One always accepts the world with which they are presented, and the same rule applies in literature. Everything in a work is filtered through the narrator, so that brings up the question of how one can be certain they are being told pure fact and reason, and the answer, although no one wants to believe it, is that the reader has absolutely no way of knowing; however, once the reader understands that, they become aware of an even greater truth: they will never know the actuality of any story. Literary works are filled with tensions and paradoxes, which is what makes them seem so interesting to readers. People are drawn to paradoxical stories because they can be interpreted in an exceptional number of ways, but what if the author took a simple …show more content…
Although the story is supposedly about Gene, most of the plotline involves Finny just as much as, or more than, it does the narrator. Since the story is told by Gene, the readers get the description of Finny through his eyes, so Finny is described as almost godlike. Gene gets it across to the audience that Finny is handsome, funny, talented, earnest, and an amazing athlete. That may seem like a standard main character to read about in a literary work, but throughout the novel the more Gene reveals about Finny to the reader, the more Finny becomes a paradox and a tension grows in the story. The paradox grows to the point where it is almost as if Finny was never a real character, just someone Gene and the other students made up to avoid leaving their childhood …show more content…
The problem with that was that Finny was always unintentionally breaking rules to play these games, but he desperately wanted to be a good student and loved his school. After getting in trouble for breaking a rule (e.g. missing dinner, sneaking out, wearing his school tie as a belt, etc.), Finny would always talk his way out of getting a punishment, not because he was schmoozing his way out of a consequence, but because he truly saw an opportunity for friendship between him and the instructors. Then, as the novel progresses, the audience is exposed to greater paradoxes involving Finny. After Finny falls out of the tree and leaves to recover it is like he is out of the story, so everything dies down and loses the fun spirit of things, but when he returns he is as energetic as ever and livens things up immediately. That shows how instead of changing to be symbolically brought back to life, Finny stays exactly the same, something an author rarely does with a character. Finally, once the reader realizes that Finny is not taking place in the novel as the protagonist, antagonist, or narrator, but still has a very vital role in the story, it attracts the question of why Gene is telling the story if it is all about