A Separate Peace

Wow! This book was pretty amazing. There were a few parts of the book that seem like rambling and didnt really interesting to me. The characters were built nicely and you get the feeling that you know the characters. Finny came across to me as a leader and Gene as a follower. Seems that everyone in the school "looks up" to Finny or has a fear of him. These characters are dynamic characters because in this book it shows the maturing of young men.
Finny was an interesting character to men because of his ways and his actions. My opinion of him changed very much throuhout the book. At first I really did not like Finny and I thought he was not good for Gene, but by the end of the book I had a love for Finny. Finny seems to be a "sweet talker" and he knows how to talk himself out many things and not get in trouble for breaking the rules.
This book has many examples of how our human nature cant leave a challenge behind. Like when Finny is wanting Gene to jump off the branch and pressures him until he does and when Finny wants Gene to go to the beach or when Gene thinks that Finny is trying to "out do" him athletic wise. After the accident when Gene and Finny are helping each other with sports and academics it made me feel good that they were using their talents to help the other instead of competing.
Gene was in a very hard place to tell Finny that he had made him fall from the tree and Finny was in a hard place to believe that his best friend had ended his sports career or his ability to be in the war.
I love the way that Knowles compares the Jeeps to adolescents. He says that the jeeps look as if they are wishing they were going 80 miles per hour instead of rolling down the dull street they are on. This is so much like young teenagers always wishing that they were going down that highway at 100 miles per hour. They are always wishing for something better than where they are in their life.