seperate peace Gene

            Gene Forrester is both the narrator and main character in A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Gene has many positive qualities such as being compassionate and caring but also contains many negatives such as being disloyal, jealous, paranoid and insincere. Gene's positive and negative qualities are often within conflict with each other and are the basis for the plot whole story. .
             Gene's negative qualities come into play early in the story. Gene's jealousy, paranoia and disloyalty are visible when he begins believing that Gene is deliberately trying to make his marks drop so Finny can stay "better" than him, when in fact Finny is trying to help Gene have fun by taking him out with him. Gene's jealousy and paranoia trick Gene into believing that Gene is just pretending to be his friend so he can ruin Gene's grades. Gene's negative qualities continue to outshine his positive qualities early in the story as Gene intentionally makes Finny fall from the tree limb. Gene committed this vicious act after finding out that Finny wasn't trying to ruin Gene's grades but instead trying to make Gene's life more exiting. Gene's negative qualities continue to show later in the story. When Gene travels to Vermont to visit the slightly retarded Leper he can't handle Leper bringing up the truth about what happened during Finny's fall from the tree and kicks Leper onto the ground. Also later in his visit to Leper he can't handle Leper speaking about his hallucinations at the army camp and verbally lashes out at Leper and repeatedly calls him humiliating names. .
             Gene's positive qualities only begin to show after injuring Finny. After injuring Finny he has brought him "down to his level" and he now no longer has any reason to feel jealous towards Finny and no reason to feel insecure. Gene now believes that he equal to Finny in everyway and in some ways is better than Finny. Although Gene now feels equal to Gene, he is clouded with thoughts of guilt and now feels an incredible sense of remorse and wishes that he never had made Finny fall from the limb.