Friendship in A Seperate Peace

             In John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace, friendship is a distinguished theme. Friendship is exhibited when two people share many common interests, do not turn on each other, and are not envious of each other. Due to the fact that Gene and Finny's relationship does not demonstrate any of these characteristics, they do not have an authentic friendship. In this book it appeared as if Gene and Finny had a genuine friendship due to the amount of time they spent together, yet they were never true comrades.
             One characteristic of friendship is sharing common interests. Gene and Finny have interests that are completely opposite. On one hand, Gene enjoys and excels at school. Contrary to this fact, Finny enjoys and excels at any activity that requires courage-school didn't contain these characteristics for Finny. Neither Gene or Finny is skilled in the activities their counterpart is flawless in. Finny feels as if sports are the most important thing in life and sometimes tries to tear Gene away from his precious books. One day Finny tried to convince Gene, who was trying to catch up on trigonometry lesson that he had missed the day before when he and Finny had gone to the beach, to go outside onto the banks of the Devon River to see Leper Lepellier jump from a tree. Even though Gene still thinks that education is more important than jumping off of an insignificant tree, he still followed Finny's lead and put his homework off until later. On a different occasion, Gene starts to do his homework and Finny attempts to begin his homework within minutes Finny is fidgeting and aborts his mission. Patiently Gene listens to Finny's chattering but become upset and forges on to complete his homework. In order to have a friendship you must have some common traits otherwise it becomes very difficult to find something that interests both of you. If no common bonds exist eventually one person will drag the other person with
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Friendship in A Seperate Peace. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 05:06, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/94006.html