Jealousy In A Separate Peace

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“The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves. - William Penn”
Throughout the story there was a variety of themes that you could have chosen that were seen in the book. However, I believe jealousy had the biggest impact from the beginning to the end of the story. Gene’s jealousy takes you through a cycle of events from a struggle with his lack of identity, changes going on within the walls of the Devon School, and his encounter of him having to face growing up. Jealousy is evident in A Separate Peace through the author’s use of epiphany, tone, and conflict. Gene acted on emotions frequently which lead to him having a guilty feeling after he had came to the realization of what he had to FInny in the tree. “I burst out …show more content…
The two that stuck out to me however was between Gene and Quackenbush and between FInny and Brinker. In a seperate peace finny and brinker have a certain type of tension between the two of them. Primarily i think the tension came from when Gene unlisted because Finny had tol him to but Brinker and Gene were suppose to enter the war together. “ I know you haven’t got many of your own said Brinker with a chairatable smile. Use some of Gene’s then.” this goes under the theme of jealousy because Brinker was jealous of Gene and Finnys relationship. That is also another factor of why Brinker was so mean to Finny. Another instance of conflict was gene and quackenbush. Gene was Jealous of the amount of power that Quackenbush had been given. Every time the two of them spoke there was some tension. On day the two were talking and Gene got so angry that he punched Quackenbush right in the face. “Listen you maimed son of a b**** I hit him hard across the face.” Gene was jealous of him because of the amount of power he had and this is what the conflict esculated to. There were lots of conflicts throughout the book however Gene and Finny almost always were the ones in the middle of it. Unfortantely Genes conflicts and jealous acts lead him to a period of not knowing his identty, and Brinker to ultimately leading to the death of
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