Gene Forrester is the narrator and protagonist in A Separate Peace written by John Knowles. As the novel is written in a flashback format, Gene is encountering the story of his growth into adulthood and maturity at Devon School from his perspective. He somewhat directly encounters the reader with his fears, insecurities, attitude and much more. Because of his insecurities and the outsider feeling due to him being a southerner going to a northern state school, Gene saw everybody and everything as a threat or competition to him; which lead to his many impulses.

As the flashback story begins Gene is displayed as a percipient, who would take all sides of the situation into consideration before acting onto a decision. He’s also the type of character that is studious, and always listening to the teacher; he obeys all and every rule there is. In the first few chapters after Gene and his best friend -Finny- arise from their sleep on the beach the morning Gene has his test, he returns to the school to take his trigonometry test, which he fails; hence he was unable to study the night before. When he …show more content…
Though they’re best friends, Finny is the complete opposite of Gene, personality wise. He’s the carefree, athletics type of character that Gene wishes to be at times. During his time at Devon, Gene began to admire the way Finny can handle any situation, charm any adult, and do anything he desires without being caught, which what caused Gene to make his decision of letting gene control him. Though adult Gene realizes “Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my escape from it” (10), it wasn’t always about fitting, it was about Finny accepting him or being like him because his characteristics that Gene needed to feel