Friendship In A Separate Peace, By John Knowles

Superior Essays
Kierstin Flint
Mrs. Atnip
English 2 Period 2
2 November 2015
Friendship
A Relationship in One

During a lifetime friendships are the most important bond that people can form. These friendships are alive throughout all generations and we use the skills we learn to continue making new relationships. Throughout the novel, A Separate Peace, the author, John Knowles, displays the good things about close friendships but also the hardships that often occur. Gene and Finny, two boys that attend Devon school, grow emotionally and physically despite their opposite personalities. These boys go through several situations that force them to consider the value of their friendship. Throughout their time at Devon Academy, Knowles shows that the relationship
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During the game he yells at Gene, “There aren’t any teams in Blitzball…we’re all enemies. Knock him down!” (Knowles 38). Since Finny is a big fan of athletics he tries to bring everyone into the game whether they like it or not. Furthermore, their change in personalities causes them to be interested in different things and have opposing opinions on certain situations. In a literary criticism of A Separate Peace called “Moral Ambiguity,” Written by Paul Witherington, Phineas influences people like thoughts do “there is something almost diabolical about Finny, ‘innocence.’ His power over people is uncanny; Gene describes it has hypnotic and consist of including others temporarily to suspend their practical logical systems of belief to follow this non-logical argument, …show more content…
These three things make it possible to help, or start a friendship. That way it is easy to see how good of a friend someone can be. In A Separate Peace, Gene and Finny have all the main aspects of a friendship, and it starts out as a strong relationship. This changed when Finny loses trust in Gene, and believes he is being dishonest about making him fall from the tree. After the incident Gene loses trust in Finny for not believing him, and their entire friendship starts to plummet. Even though the change does not always have to be negative, it can change just as much for good as it can

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