Essay

Nathaniel Burns-Sarno
English 10 Honors/ Mr. George
December 13, 2008
A Separate Peace: Essay Response Number Eleven
Finny’s Fall: Accident or Attack?
Emotion can be a very powerful quality for a human being to possess. It can do great good, as well as great evil, depending on how it is let out. Putting too much emotion into something can be harmful to both you and those around you, while putting too little emotion into something does not get you anywhere. Releasing emotion comes with a few risks of how those around you will interpret it. Even the slightest expression of emotion can loose a person many friends if looked at through the wrong eyes. So, it would seem that the only safe thing to do would be to keep your emotions to yourself. After doing so at first, one would feel perfectly fine, maybe even a little better. However, it would only be a temporary feeling of peace. Over time, those emotions will pile on top of each other, and the results will be disastrous. It could harm not only oneself, but also those around them. Such was the case of Gene “accidentally” causing his best friend, Phineas, to fall to what could have been his death. The cause of Phineas’ fall was clear; Gene had been bottling up his emotions at the expense of his friendship and sanity. Phineas’ fall was no accident.
Throughout the novel, it is made clear many times that Gene is envious of Phineas, who seems to be perfect in every way. He was popular, he was athletic, and his viewpoint of the world was so unique that Gene could barely understand him. Phineas seemed to have a hold on everyone around them, drawing them closer to him as if they were balls of metal caught in the field of his “magnet of charisma”. No one would know this better than Gene, who was Phineas’ best friend. However, their close relationship did not stop Gene from feeling a great deal of resentment for Phineas.
The first mistake Gene made was banishing his feelings of envy from his mind for the sake of convenience to himself. Gene seemed sure that there was no ill-will between he and Phineas. However, when Gene says, “Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn’t help envying him that a little, which was perfectly normal. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little,”(25), it seems that he is trying to convince himself more than anyone else. I find it a bit odd that Gene never once expresses these feelings of envy to Phineas for the remainder of the novel. After all, Phineas was always sincere with Gene. Why could Gene not return the favor? Perhaps because that was not the kind of person Gene is. After all, telling Phineas that he envied him would be showing an emotion, and Gene seems to want to keep his emotions locked up. It is not too shocking that Gene said nothing, but still, had he made even the slightest gesture to make his feelings clear, it could very well have saved Phineas’ leg, and, in effect, his life.
Gene sees Phineas as the perfect person, even going as far to say, “It made Finny seem too unusual for-not friendship, but too unusual for rivalry.”(45) Gene, having admitted that Phineas was in competition with no one, could have taken a good step to overcoming his envy. However, knowing this fact about Phineas only made Gene envy him more, as it was a trait that few possessed. This would have been harmless had Gene made some attempt to convey his feelings. However, once again, Gene keeps quiet about his feelings. This action started him on the road to distraction, it was only natural that it would drive him through it.
Gene soon gives up his notions of Phineas being beyond rivalry by actually attempting to reach a point of competition with him by improving on the areas where Phineas needed work, such as academics. In Gene’s mind, doing so would rid him of any jealousy of Phineas by making the both of them even. Gene’s thoughts on this were:
He had won and been proud to win the Galbraith Football Trophy and the Contact Sport Award, and there were two or three other athletic prizes he was sure to get this year or next. If I was head of the class on Graduation Day and made a speech and won the Ne Plus Ultra Scholastic Achievement Citation, then we would both have come out on top, we would be even, that was all. We would be even….(52)
Gene was right to want to rid himself of his jealousy of Phineas, but he went about it the wrong way. Instead of attempting to excel everywhere that Phineas could not, he should have just been happy for his friend. Gene continuously says in the novel that he wanted to be like Phineas. Why then, could he not just be himself? That is what Phineas did, after all.
However, Gene soon goes back to his belief that Phineas is beyond rivalry after realizing that unlike Phineas with sports, academics did not come naturally to Gene. This may have been the piece of frustration that lead to his outburst of causing Phineas to fall from the tree, for it was the last feeling Gene bottled up before they all came shooting out to knock Phineas off of his perch.
The final nail in my argument that Gene intentionally caused Phineas to fall from the tree is that Gene actually felt remorse after Phineas was injured, and even tells Phineas, “I jounced the limb. I caused it… I deliberately jounced the limb so you would fall off.”(70) Most would see this as Gene expressing a false sense of “survivor’s guilt”, and saying something that he did not really mean. However, I find that hard to believe. In the past, Gene could not even bring himself to display true emotions. How could false emotions be any different?
Without a doubt, Gene caused Phineas’ accident. Whether he actually wanted to or not is still ambiguous. However, he felt the need to harm Phineas, and acted on impulse. And whether impulse is helpful or harmful, it is never accidental.