Analyze the role of competition in Gene and Finny's relationship in A Separate Peace.
Gene has a competitive personality, a darker side of himself, that he doesn't like to acknowledge. As a result, he projects his deeply competitive nature onto Phineas. It isn't that he is competitive with Finny and wants to beat Finny and win, it's that Phineas wants to beat him and be number one—or so Gene wants to believe. As Gene suddenly begins to think:
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.
Gene decides that Finny hates the idea of the two of them being even—Gene as top scholar and Finny as top athlete—and decides that Finny wants to pull out ahead. Suddenly, it becomes clear to Gene that Finny has been trying to sabotage his summer school studies by sucking up all his time with blitzball, the Super Suicide Society meetings, and trips to the beach. His friendship is fake—just a way to bring him down. However, as it turns out, it is actually Gene who wants to bring Finny down.
When Gene realizes that Finny thinks that Gene's brains come naturally to him and that he doesn't have to study to do well in his classes, Gene then decides:
He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us.
But this too is unsatisfactory to Gene because it means that Finny is a better person than he is, a person of higher character. Gene's jealousy of Finny flares once again. For Gene, the nature of his relationship with Finny is defined by his own sense of competition with this friend. He feels an overwhelming need to win against him, regardless of the cost.
It is just a short time after Gene has decided Finny is not trying to compete with him that he, still jealous and competitive, tries to destroy Finny: he "jounce[s] the limb" that causes Finny to fall. Gene seems disconnected from this action, still more concerned with winning than with his friend's well being right after the act:
Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud. It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him make. With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten.
Gene has just done a horrible thing to his friend, but all he can think about is his "sureness" as he jumps in the river, with his fear "forgotten." He can, of course, now forget his fear—his fear of losing—because he has badly injured Finny.
We all have a darker side. Gene dissociates from his own, first through his projection of his shadow onto Finny and then, in a dissociated way (he says "my knees bent," as if this were something he had no control over), jouncing the branch on purpose to make Finny fall. Gene would like to see himself as a good and noble person, but his actions show his darker impulses.
What differentiates rivalry and competition in "A Separate Peace"?
Rivalry is between two distinct parties.
Competition is between any parties.
In A Separate Peace Gene pits himself in particular as a rival of Finny. He wants to have something that he is better than Finny at, but not necessarily the same thing that Finny excels in, sports.
Finny on the other hand enjoys competition fully with any group and never really sets out on purpose to have a rival. Finny is highly competitive and comments that in sports one must always win. He often creates activities involving competition that pit everyone against each other... but all of this he does with good sportsmanship.
Many wonder if Gene's jealousy and quest to be better drove him to push Finny out of the tree in the first place and so severely injure his friend that Finny could never play sports again. If so, this is true evidence of rivalry.
I would argue both rivalry and competition are shown in the book through these two characters.
How does competition affect characters in A Separate Peace?
Competition creates false perceptions; those false perceptions lead to jealousy, resentment, and even hatred; then, those deep negative feelings, if not addressed, can emerge during a moment of weaknes and insecurity, thus creating an equation for disaster. In Knowles's novel, A Separate Peace, competition creates such a situation for Gene and Phineas. Young kids generally measure themselves by those with whom they associate; so, it seems natural for competition to arise between two best friends. However, this competition crosses the line whenever vindictiveness or anger lead to violence as it did for Gene when he deliberately jounces Finny off of a tree branch, the result of which is a broken leg. Eventually, Gene does come to the conclusion that he says is a "single sustaining thought;" Gene realizes, "You and Phineas are even already. You are even in enmity. You are both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone. You did hate him for breaking that school swimming record, but so what? He hated you for getting an A in every course but one last term. You would have had an A in that one except for him. Except for him" (53). It takes the whole novel for the boys to finally come around to appreciate each other and to forgive for all the competitiveness that they created, but at least that closure was there before Finny died.
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