Gene Pushes Finny

 In the book “A Separate Peace”, by John Knowles, it talks about these two best friends FiInny and Gene. Finny always had a feeling that Gene wasn’t the exact person he wanted to be friends with. Deep down inside Finny is kind of a bad minded person. When Gene would handout with Finny, I think that Finny wouldn’t like it. Gene did become a better person when FiInny let go.

When Gene pushes Finny off the tree, he knew he regretted it and shouldn’t have done it. “I was not of the same quality as him, Gene says, suddenly perceiving his own moral inferiority to his best friend.” (14) Gene did like being friends with Finny at one point. Then the next Gene thought to himself that Finny wasn’t the right friend for him to have.

During the war, when Gene pushes Finny off the tree he says, he realizes he did a horrible mistake. He didn’t mean to do harm, but what he did was done and can’t be redone. The way Gene changed after the war was he become a wise individual who obtained his knowledge with age.

During the tree scene, Gene convinces himself that Finny isn’t his friend, tricking himself into thinking that Finny is a conniving person that wants to sabotage his academic learning, to take what Gene has. “For me, this moment- four years is a moment in history, was the war. The war was and is still reality for me. Understanding and do think in its atmosphere and knowledge.” (24) Gene didn’t care about FInny anymore. He didn’t think that what he did was wrong. Since Finny’s gone, Gene is able to do what he wants, to focus on himself and school.

The way Finny’s death affected Gene was that there was a sense love and loss between the two. They had a passive aggressive relationship. Their relationship was something dependent that only one thing had to happen in order for them to not be friends again. Gene was able to better define his own identity because of this experience. The death of Finny, forced him to break away from an identity that was fused with Finny. “I did not cry then or ever think about Finn, I didn't even cry when I stood watching him being lowered into his families straight laced burial ground outside Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my only funeral”. It was take a complete separation from Finny for Gene to understand himself.

In conclusion, Gene missed the war because his war was active on school, he was trying to find peace within himself. He wanted to feel like everything was okay. He didn’t think about Finny at all. All he thought about was himself and how he was in school. He didn’t care about anything else. He lost that picture of FInny inside his head, he forgot about him. Long lost Finny, never seen or talked about.  

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