Friday, August 30, 2013

What are some specific details that show how Gene is a specific character in A Separate Peace?I need 3 details.

Your question is very general. Gene shows many sides to
his character through the course of the novel, with deepening awareness of himself and
of the levels of his relationship with Finny as the story
progresses.


Early on, Gene is frustrated with Finny, but
also with himself for being unable to stand firm against Finny's ideas when he is
uncomfortable with them.


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I wouldn't have been on that damn limb except
for him. I wouldn't have turned around, and so lost my balance, if he hadn't been there.
I didn't need to feel any tremendous rush of gratitude toward Phineas...I never got
inured to the jumping....but I always jumped. Otherwise I would have lost face with
Phineas, and that would have been
unthinkable.



Gene becomes
aware that he is a better student than Finny but isn't sure how that affects their
relationship and the fact that Finny is the better
athlete.



He
had won and been proud to win the Galbraith Football Trophy and the Contact Sport
Award...If I was head of the class on Graduation Day and made a speech and won the Ne
Plus UltraScholastic Achievement Citation, then we would both have come out on top, we
would be even, that was all...My brain exploded. He minded, despised the possibility
that I might be the head of the
school.



After Finny's second
fall, Gene has to deal again with the feelings below the surface of his
friendship.



I
didn't know what I was going to say at the Infirmary. I couldn't escape a confusing
sense of having lived through all of this before - Phineas in the Infirmary, and myself
responsible...We members of the Class of 1943 were moving very fast toward the war now,
so fast that there were casualties even before we reached it, a mind was clouded and a
leg was broken...My brief burst of animosity, lasting only a second, a part of a second,
something which came before I could recognize it and was gone before I knew it had
possessed me, what was that in the midst of this
holocaust?



In the end, Gene
is a very introspective character who struggles a great deal with his insecurities but
does, with the hindsight of time, reach a mature understanding of himself and his
experiences at Devon.

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