Friendship In John Knowles A Separate Peace

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What is the significance of friendship? Is it everlasting and important, or can it be dangerous and tedious. These questions arise while reading A Separate Peace. While these questions arise they also get answered. In the novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene and Finny find the true meaning of friendship and how it could be important but dangerous and even deadly.
Friendship can be important and even a lifesaver. This is shown at the time where Gene and Finny make the secrete club, the “Super Suicide Society of The Summer Session”. While the boys were making this club they decided that in order to become a member of this “society” you would need to jump off of a tree’s branch into a river. The reason why this event shows that friendship can be a lifesaver is because of how Finny literally saved Gene’s life by catching him from the branch. “... then I realized that in turning I began to lose my balance. There was a moment of total, impersonal panic, and then Finny’s hand shot out and grabbed my arm...my balance restored” (Knowles. 25). Gene is alive because of Finny, Gene would've broken his back …show more content…
Gene is an example of a bad friend and why friendship can be dangerous and tedious. After the events of chapter four, Finny is left crippled and unable to play sports for the rest of his life, sports were the only activities he was good at. Finny didn’t get good grades to be proud of but he always had sports to do so. Now Finny can’t even play sports because of Gene and what he did, “Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step forward toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balanced gone… tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud” (Knowles. 52). The amount of jealousy Gene had to have pressured up inside him almost makes Gene look sinister. This is a dangerous friendship and friends like jealous Gene should be
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