Finny's fall from the tree and Gene's fall from innocence can be traced to unresolved tensions in Gene over conformity and individuality, created by the mixed feeling of envy and admiration he feels for Finny.
A true individual, Finny enjoys pure freedom, an inspired, natural flow of energy that expresses itself in his athletic strength and grace.
Gene, in contrast, feels the constraints of conformity, obedience, and responsibility. As a hard-working, serious student, Gene resents Finny's effortless life and especially his good nature. Motivated, then, by envy and resentment, Gene causes Finny to fall from a high limb and break his leg, ending his friend's sports career and, ultimately, his life.
After the fall, Gene's unacknowledged guilt haunts him, then moves him to painful self-knowledge, and at last to a peace that lights his way into adulthood. Previous Book Summary. Next Character List. Gene joins his friend in a peaceful retreat from the world, celebrated in the school's unofficial Winter Carnival. Even a friend's enlistment and emotional breakdown does not intrude upon the peace Gene finds with Finny, until one evening when Brinker and some of the other boys drag Gene and Finny to the Assembly Room, where they propose to get to the truth about Finny's injury.
In a mock trial, Brinker questions Finny, searching for proof of Gene's responsibility in his fall. When another boy's memory of the fall opens Finny's eyes to his friend's guilt, he lurches angrily from the room, falling on the stairs and breaking his leg again. At a distance, Gene follows Finny to the infirmary, hoping to talk with him alone. Finny, however, will not talk with Gene until the next day, when he asks sadly if his friend really meant to hurt him or if it were simply an unconscious impulse.
Gene insists that he acted without hatred — blindly — and Finny accepts the explanation with relief.
Later that day, in an operation to set the leg again, Finny dies when some marrow from the broken bone enters the bloodstream and stops his heart. Gene accepts the news without crying, because he feels as if he has died, too. By John Knowles. Previous Next. Setting The fictional Devon school in rural New Hampshire, The setting of A Separate Peace — both time and place — are integral to the story and its meaning.
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