A Separate Peace Essay Example for Free

A crack Peace EssayIn the book, A Separate Peace, the author, John Knowles, writes to us a novel about war, just happens to focus more on the war within the human heart. This novel tells a story of two boys co-dependency during World War Two, and explores the difficulties with understanding the self during adolescence. Identity is complicated enough as the narrator, gene Forrester, enters adulthood in a time of war, but a difficult friendship with a fellow student and rival leads to a further wonder of identity. Early in the book, the boys affinity is charged by divisors jealousy and hate of Phineas leadership. However, by and by Phineas falls from the tree, Gene ejects his darker signatures from himself and turns their relationship in a new direction where co-dependency, instead of envy, drives it. The central relationship between Gene and Finny, involves a troublesome search to authorize identity outside of co-dependency. Gene Forrester is a boy with many conflicts th at he must face throughout his high school year.The most world-shaking of these troubles is, without a doubt, Genes struggle with his avouch identity. At first Gene is displeased with his personality, or lack thereof. He envies his best friend, Phineas (Finnys), wit, charm, and leadership. Throughout the book, Gene repeatedly finds himself acting like his friend, a chemise occurring that Gene is unaware of. There are a number of significant alterations within this story. Phineas is transformed from an progressive athlete into a cripple after his accident and then sets out to transform Gene in his place.This change is the beginning process by which Genes identity begins to blur into Finnys, a transformation symbolized by Genes putting on Finnys clothes one evening in short after the accident. I washed the traces off me and then put on a pair of cocoa brown slacks, a pair in which Phineas had been particularly critical of when he wasnt wearing them, and a blue flannel shirt (78) . This is the first time in the book that we notice just how frequently Gene is codependent on Phineas, even when he is gone.From this point on, Gene and Phineas come to depend on distributively other for psychological support. Gene playing sports because Phineas cannot, Listen, pal, if I cant play sports, youre sledding to play them for me this allows Finny to train Gene to be the athlete that Finny himself cannot be. This training seems to be a path for Phineas solely to live vicariously through Gene. But Gene actively welcomes his attempt, for just as Finny acquires inner say-so through Gene, Gene also finds happiness in losing the person he dislikes, himself, into the person he actually likes, Phineas. and I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my plan from the first to become part of Phineas. (77)In this way, the boys relationship becomes a perfect illustration of co-dependency, with each feeling off of and bec oming fulfilled by, the other. This newfound co-dependency begins the evolution of the boys individual identities. Finny knows himself throughout the book, and is comfortable in his own skin, at least at first. After his fall, he becomes more withdrawn and tends to hide his current feelings. He seems to lose himself as the book progresses.The innocence and general good nature that defined him early on is lost in later chapters, as he continually deludes himself as to Genes true intentions. Gene, on the other hand, hides his true identity from Phineas and the others through most of the novel. Yet Gene truly reveals himself at several key points such as pushing Finny from the tree. The boys are living in their own transcendental illusions that World War Two is a mere conspiracy created by old men and keep to believe that Gene, Finny through him, will go to the Olympics and that the world cant change their dreams.The boys are refusing to rear their own goals and responsibilities wi thout each other. Not even Finnys death, though it separates them physically, can truly disentangle Genes identity from Phineas. Gene feels as though Finnys funeral is his own. In a way, the funeral is indeed Genes own. So much of Gene is intermixed with Phineas that it is difficult to imagine one boy existing without the other.The correct novel becomes Genes recollection of building his own identity, culminating in his return to Devon years later, where he is finally able to come to terms with what hes done. During the time I was with him, Phineas created an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and but personal reservations, letting its rocklike facts sift through and be accepted only a little at a time, only as much as he could assimilate without a sense of chaos and loss (194). It is perhaps only his understanding that Phineas alone has no enemy that allows the elder Gene to reestablish a separate identity. One that is inferior to Phineas.