Ryan Harris

Mrs. Curtis

Honors English 9

1/18/12

Together We Stand

I remember as a kid, about six or seven years ago. Standing in a hotel in downtown Chicago with my dad, I saw a painting of soldiers. The image of the painting is still vivid. There was a soldier with his rifle shouting back to other men, in front of him was an immense city under siege. Helicopters flew through the air, and tanks rolled through the rough sand. The painting was amazing! But that's not what stuck with me. I remember seeing in the eyes of the men together running towards the city. The fear their eyes seemed to portray. They were just like little kids, running towards the unknown, expecting the worst. The painting had a sense of "we all go together." No matter how quickly we move forward, no matter how scared we are; there is still that one person next to us always. Just as scared. There is a person that will die with you, and stand with you until the end.

After reading the novel A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles. The memory of this painting came back to me. The brotherhood between Gene and Phineas really struck me. It was often confusing, all of the twisted ideas behind this friendship. But in the end, I'm willing to say it was just two friends scared of the future, scared of what would happen to each other. This was not clear to me until the last chapter. But after the death of Finny and after the concept of Gene dying with him had been introduced, the original reputation of every boy at Devon as jealous rivals and liars was broken during Brinker’s conversation with his selfish, foolish, idiotic dad. "We'll do what we have to. After all, that is all we can do." Brinker said we, not I. This term is common and overused, but in this case, its definition serves just the purpose. All of the boys are scared. Scared to die and not be remembered, scared to grow up, scared of the future. What keeps them going forward is them going forward together. This is why I find the title of the last chapter together.

What happens when that motivation, that person keeping you moving on leaves? What happened when it dies? You die with it. "I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family's straight-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case." In order for Gene to move on in his life, Finny was to unwillingly die for him. For if Finny had not left Gene; Gene wouldn’t have known how important Finny was to him.

Back cover- Envy and guilt can drive people far beyond the brink of insanity; it can even drive some people, such as Gene Forrester, to the point of subconsciously killing your best friend. In A Separate Piece by John Knowles, Gene’s envy towards Phineas, his “best friend” who is described by Gene as an graceful, majestic god at any and everything, causes Gene to question his own worth as a person numerous times, he even puts on his friends cloths to try to feel more significant. Gene’s envy doesn’t just wreck him physically; it destroys him emotionally as well. Throughout the novel Gene is always thinking, calculating, and hypothesizing about every single little thing that happens between him and Phineas, just so that he can be better at something, anything. In chapter four Gene even states “I was not of the same quality as he”, how much more envious and jealous of someone can you get before you deem yourself a lesser quality of human being than someone else? Throughout this story, envy is really something to look out for, as it is one of the dominant themes of the story.     

Front inside flap- Throughout the novel, A Separate Piece by John Knowles, there is a central relationship between Gene and Phineas, the two main characters of the book. From a distance their friendship would seem quite normal, although truthfully their relationship is anything but that. All because of Gene and who he is as a person and who he wants to be.

Gene is wildly envious of Phineas in every single way possible; Gene is also haunted by an extreme guilt, and is driven past the point of insanity by his always calculating mind and rollercoaster emotions. Because of Gene’s extreme envy over Phineas, it causes him to always be calculating ways that he can be better than him at something or do something better, his mind is like an extremely complicated series of checks and balances, and sometimes that causes his emotions to swing from a obscene envy, to a malevolent hate. Ultimately, all of these traits of Gene may have cost Phineas his life, just so that Gene could have the slightest peace of mind. Most of Gene’s guilt comes from his envy towards Phineas, who he had both resented and adored which lead him to subconsciously, or maybe even consciously, push him out of the tree, shattering his leg. With Gene both loving and hating him, there was a part that may have jiggled the branch that the two of them were standing on and pushing him down the stairs, although there is also a separate peace of him which truly cares about Phineas deeply as a friend. Although while Phineas was away, Gene had a few moments where he revealed his envy towards Phineas to himself, and he may not have even known it. Gene had put on Phineas’s cloths, and suddenly felt remarkably different, he even said “"But when I looked in the mirror it was no remote aristocrat I had become, no character out of daydreams. I was Phineas, Phineas to the life. I even had his humorous expression in my face, his sharp, optimistic awareness. I had no idea why this gave me such intense relief, but it seemed, standing in Finny's triumphant shirt, that I would never stumble through the confusions of my own character" (62). This adoration and hate, do not go hand and hand, although it creates who Gene is. Except, who Gene is, is not who he wants to be, obviously he wants to be Phineas, he wants to be exactly like him, even down to the way he walks.

            Back Cover inside flap- On the cover of this book, our artists worked hard to strategically place symbolic and meaningful illustrations there, although you may possibly be wondering what significance they have.

            Gene and