A Separate Peace (Compare and Contrast Finny and Gene) Have you ever had a best friend who was the complete the opposite of you? The novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, tells of a pair of best friends who vary quite a bit from one another. Gene's best friend, Finny, is an athletic individual who loves to break the rules while he himself is a law abiding studious person. The two main characters in …showed first 75 words of 1110 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1110 total…Finny realizes that the war was real and that his best friend did actually go against him and cause his paralyzing accident. While there are much more differences than similarities between these two characters, there is no denying that both characters influenced one another and in a way, needed each other. Although the story had a tragic ending, good came out of it because Gene became a better person and the war inside himself ended.