A Separate Peace

            
             The trial at Devon between Gene and Finny plays a vital part in the novel. In "A Separate Peace" by John Knowles the trial between Gene and Finny brings out many conflicts between them and Finny faces his own conflicts when hearing the facts given at the time. I think the whole theme of the trial is to show Finny that Gene is really the one who ruined Finny's sport career.
             The trial plays a very vital part in the novel. The trial let out many facts to everyone there at the time, and consequences followed to everyone there also. If the trial did not happen the fact that Gene actually pushed Finny out of the tree would never come real in Finny's mind, and everyone there actually believed Leper for what he saw, even though they thought he was crazy. When Leper told what happen and Finny hears it and looks at Gene's reactions and sees his face it makes him run away, when he did this he falls on the steps and breaks his leg again! That just makes Gene more upset and have more distress feelings inside about the whole situation. .
             The major theme of the trial is to get the point across that Gene is the one who pushed Finny out of the tree. Brinker tried his hardest to do this, he even went and found Leper to tell what he saw that day the accident happened. I think that he was mostly looking for Gene's reactions to what was being said and the way he looked at Finny and confess himself that he caused the whole thing out of jealousy. Brinker got almost everything that he was looking for, Finny heard almost the whole story about how it happened and Gene had a huge part why Finny fell from the tree. Even though it was Finny's idea to jump Gene was the one who wiggled the branch, and Finny knew now.
             In the novel there were many conflicts. But the two major ones that the trial reveals were the internal conflict between Gene and himself. The way I think this one is so important is because Gene and Finny were such good friends and Gene did not want Finny to get hurt real bad, he just wanted to knock him off down out of jealously and now he thought about what he did and all the commotion he caused by the accident and he felt bad and didn't want Finny to find out this way.