Gene's Changing Mind

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Gene’s Changing Mind

In A Separate Peace, author John Knowles portrays Gene Forrester, the main character, as a person whose feelings towards people and events are always changing. These changes are best shown through friends, including Finny and the war. They reflect on the personality of Gene, and show his indecisive and confused state of mind.
Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my escape from it.(p2)

This quote is from early in the book, while Gene is looking back on his time at Devon. He now realizes that he was living in great fear of the war he was fighting within himself during his senior year. Between 1942 and 1957, Gene’s mind made the biggest change of all. If he had confronted this fear during the fall and winter of 1942, his life would have changed drastically.
For example, Gene did not face his problems, causing him to be less of a friend to Finny. He felt a competitive rivalry between them that did not exist. This is why he jounced the limb, which set in motion the events leading to Finny’s death.
Gene’s thoughts and feelings towards Finny were always changing. During the summer session, Gene saw Finny as perfect and almost as a god.
Phineas…like a river god, his raised arms invoking the air to support him, face transfigured, body a complex set of balances and compensations, each muscle aligned in perfection with all the others to maintain this supreme fantasy of achievement…(p67).

Gene was Finny’s best friend, and Finny would always agree with that throughout the whole book, but Gene’s mind would never commit to true friendship. An example of this occurred when Finny saved Gene from falling out of the tree:
We were standing on a limb… I realized that in turning I had begun to lose my balance… Finny’s hand ...