A Separate Peace Essay

Tim Rezendes
English 10 Honors
Mr. George
December 15, 2008
Who’s a Better Friend, Gene or Finny
Friendship is a crucial part of a person’s young, adolescent, and adult life. In the novel, A Separate Peace, the friendship between Gene and Finny is corrupted throughout the novel by Gene’s false sense of jealousy. In the novel Gene has a peculiar feeling of envy and a false idea of a competition between him and Finny. These envious tendencies and false sense of competition eventually push Gene over the edge when he jounces the tree limb causing Finny to fall off and shatter his leg and his sports career. Finny always wanted the best for Gene and was never jealous of him which is why he was a better friend to Gene. Finny is a better friend than Gene because he is not envious of Gene, he always tries to include Gene in everything he does, and Finny knows in his heart that Gene really is his best friend.
Unlike the jealousy Gene expresses to the reader throughout the novel, Finny was never jealous of Gene. Finny shows Gene that he is not jealous of him through sarcasm when he says, “I’d kill myself out of jealous envy.” (52) Finny says this after Gene asks him is he would be jealous if Gene was the head of the class. Gene takes this sarcastic response and turns it into a confession of Finny’s envy towards him. After Gene determines that Finny really is jealous he takes this idea and runs with it until he loses control and jounces Finny out of a tree; this is something that a true friend would never do.
Finny knows that he is better than Gene in some aspects of life and he lacks in comparison to Gene in other aspects. Gene, on the other hand, is always trying to one up Finny by making ludicrous comparisons and ridiculous schemes against him. This is distinctly proven to the reader when Gene says, “Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies. That explained blitz ball and the nightly meetings of the Super Suicide Society, that explained his insistence that I share all his diversions.”(53). This is an ideal instance where Gene thinks up one of his preposterous ideas. Finny would not set out to wreck Gene’s studies because he knows that he has no chance of being valedictorian. Gene is delirious because of his outrageous ideas. Finny shows another quality of a good friend by including Gene in almost everything he does.
Finny has many of the qualities that people look for when choosing the community that they want to involve themselves in. One thing that Finny does very well is the inclusion of Gene in many of the daily activities that he participates in. Finny demonstrates this late one night when he storms into the dormitory room and says, “Arise . . . Elwin Leper Lepellier has announced his intention to make the leap this very night, to qualify, to save his face at last.”(57). This shows that Finny is always trying to include Gene in activities because he feels it is what a true friend should do. Gene mistakenly thinks that Finny is, once again, trying to sabotage his studies; which clearly is not Finny’s true intention. No offense towards Finny, but he is not the type of person to think up an elaborate scheme to ruin a person’s studies just to be superior to them. Finny is the type of person who comes up with ideas spontaneously; this is an instance where he believed Gene should be present when Leper attempted the jump because Gene was a “Senior Member” of the Suicide Society. Gene is a person who over thinks just about everything; this is one of his crucial flaws. If Gene could just accept the fact that Finny really is his best friend then he may have been able to put their differences behind and have a decent friendship. Gene and Finny have completely different personalities which is why Finny chose Gene as his best friend. Although Gene cannot accept this Finny knows that Gene truly is his best pal.
“Because it is what you had in your heart that counted (56).” Ironically, Gene says this even though what he believes in his heart is completely different than what he expresses to others. Finny is a very authentic person who knows what he believes in his heart and he articulates this to people without caring what they are going to think about him. Finny illustrates his genuine quality when he says, “. . . and at this teen-age period in life the proper person is you best pal. ‘He hesitated and then added,’ which is what you are, ‘and there was silence on the dune.’”(48). Finny is being unbelievably sincere in this statement and Gene is too ignorant and hard-headed to realize this. At the pivotal point of adolescence most males would not be able to open up to someone in the way Finny had. Seeing this, Gene should have had the aptitude to believe him, but once again his envy takes over him and he cannot accept Finny’s sincerity.
Gene’s a personality is tainted by the way he lets jealousy take over and cause him to do things that a best friend and a true friend would never think of doing. Finny is, most definitely, a much better friend than Gene due to his inclusion of Gene in daily activities, his sincerity towards Gene, and the way he is never jealous and always supportive of Gene’s aspirations. I believe Gene could have very easily cleared things up with Finny if he directly confronted his problems instead of running from them until those same problems manifested themselves into a disgraceful deed. After this deed was committed Gene had no chance of being a good friend to Finny. Unlike Gene, Finny was genuine throughout the novel and always wanted the best for Gene, therefore, Finny is in fact a better friend than Gene.