A Separate Peace

            Friendship has different meanings to people, and it is totally understandable because every human has its own individual believes and judgment. Friendship can be a wonderful experience but is not as easy as it seems. In order to be able to create a friendship between two people, each person has to have the ability to trust and be loyal, otherwise, a friendship is not possible. In the book A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene and Finny are two high school boys that develop a particular relationship. Finny and Gene do not have a friendship because they do not have confidence in themselves, they do not trust each other, and they are not loyal to each other. .
             Confidence plays a big role in friendship and Finny and Gene do not have confidence in themselves. Finny invites Gene to go to the beach and even though Gene does not want to go, he does not feels confident enough to reject the invitation and somehow he goes to the beach.
             -"Let's go to the beach". The beach was hours away by bicycle, forbidden completely out of all bounds. Going there risked expulsion, destroyed the studying I was going to do for an important test the nesxt morning , blasted the reasonable amount of order I wanted to maintain in my life, and it also involved the kind of long, labored bicycle ride I hated. "All right", I said."(pg.37).
             This story took place in England during the first years of World War II and Finny kept saying to his peers that there was no war going on but, the reason he said that was because he was disabled and could barely walk and the Army rejected him.
             " "I've been writing to the Army and the Navy and the Marines and the Canadians and everybody else all winter. Did you know that? No, you didn't know that. I used the Post Office in town for my return address. They all gev me the same answer after they saw the medical report on me. The answer was no soap. We can't use you.