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