Summary Of A Separate Peace By John Knowles

How can anyone really tell the difference between a friend and an enemy? John Knowles wrote a unique book on how friends can become some of the biggest enemies. A Separate Peace’s main characters, Gene and Finny become friends after Gene starts attending Devon. They go through trials in their friendship, one of the trials happens when Gene jumps on the tree branch, by the lake at Devon, and Finny falls off, which breaks his leg, ruining his main love, sports, and his chances of going into the military. Many people accuse that Gene did it on purpose, but Finny never wanted to believe the mishap that Gene did, but Gene admitted to jumping on the tree branch having him fall off. In the end, Finny dies while having surgery on his leg, so Gene was Finny’s biggest enemy, so …show more content…
When Gene jumps on the tree branch and Finny falls off, it causes puzzlement in their friendship. “It was a courageous thing to say. Exposing a sincere emotion nakedly like that at the Devon school was the next thing to suicide. I should have told him then that he was my best friend also and rounded off what he had said. I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.” The fall shatters Finny's leg, allowing no visitors. Finny never thought Gene did anything, at first, but Gene keeps wondering if he made Finny plummet on purpose or accident. To feel comfort and think Finny will be okay, he wears Finny’s clothes. When he looks at his reflection in the mirror, Gene feels relief about everything. He says, "I was Phineas," and happiness that he will never have to "stumble through the confusions of [his, (Gene)] own character again." However, when he wakes up the next morning, that feeling vanished. This shows rivalry between Gene and Finny show how much the two boys envy one another, also how they were friends to start with then turned to enemies because of