Essay Database

The friendship of Gene, an intellectual, and Finny, a fearless athlete, is the focus of John Knowles’s A Separate Peace. Narrated by Gene Forrester, this is a story of two youths growing up at a boy’s boarding school in New England. Set at the beginning of World War II, the bond between Gene and Phineas grows as the peace in Devon School diminishes. Gene and Phineas are like two poles of a magnet, …

…why it is so easy for him to forgive Gene. Gene realizes that the whole purpose of their friendship is for him the become part of Finny, "Listen, pal, if I can’t play sports, you’re going to play them for me," and I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first to become a part of Phineas.