Comparison Of John Knowles’ Book, A Separate Peace, And John Green’s, Looking For Alaska

Comparing Looking for Alaska and A Separate Piece of Peace

A Separated Peace is set on a Vermont Boarding School in the 1940s. Looking for Alaska is based in a boarding house in Alabama in the early 21st Century. However, their similar characters and plots can still be compared. Finny is a character in A Separate Peace, and Alaska is a character in Looking for Alaska. Both characters have overlapping purposes in their stories. Finny is introduced to give the reader a unique, fascinating character. Alaska serves to connect with the main protagonist and show that everyone can be affected by internal collapse.

Finny & Alaska have a primary purpose: to showcase a distinct personality, which is essential to the relationships between Finny & Alaska and Gene & Miles. Finny, in A Separate Peace is portrayed as an amazing athlete and perfectionist. Gene’s description that Finny played blitzball was a perfect example of Gene’s statement.

The first I heard was “Never claim to be five feet nine if you’re actually five feet eight-and-a-half.” It was also said, “Always have a prayer at night as it may turn out there is God.”

The most important one was: “You’ll always win at sport.”

It’s ironic that even though he doesn’t follow the rules at school, it does not mean that his character is dishonorable. Alaska is presented as an interesting and unique character in Looking for Alaska. She shares many similarities with Finny. Her desire to violate the rules of her school is their most striking similarity. Although Alaska and Finny are similar in some ways, they are also very different. Alaska isn’t a sportsperson who is renowned for her athleticism. Alaska is portrayed as an attractive, sometimes unstable, and interesting character. Alaska’s excessive drinking and smoking habits are used to demonstrate her self-destructive and impulsive nature. “She said with the joy of a young child at Christmas, ‘You smoke to enjoy it.'” This quote, although intended to be humorously said, still illustrates Alaska’s self-destructive behaviors due to her excessive smoking. Finny is impulsive and impulsive in nature, but Alaska’s behavior is self-destructive. Their similarities are not their only differences. Alaska’s flaws are more obvious than Finny’s, who appears to be perfect in some ways. Finny’s main flaw, shown through his inability accept the reality of things not being perfect, is that he is incapable of accepting it. Finny’s misconstrued reality ultimately leads to the death of Finny because he failed to realize that Gene had begun to distrust. Alaska’s irresponsible and impulsive driving also leads to her death.

Finny & Alaska serve as a bridge between Gene & Miles. Gene and Miles may be the main characters in the books, but that does not mean they are the most important. A Separate Peace was told by Gene but Finny played a major role in the book. He is almost as important to the story as Gene. Miles is the main character in Looking for Alaska. However, much like in A Separate Peace, Alaska is the focus of most of it and is just as important to Miles. Finny, Gene’s friend during the summer in Devon, encourages Gene not to follow the rules. Gene fears that Finny may be trying to restrict his studies and is paranoid about it. It is clear that Devon has an extremely competitive atmosphere. Gene is a victim of this attitude, which leads to Finny’s death and accident. Gene realizes after Finny’s crash that he regrets his actions and that he was wrong in his earlier assumptions. Gene is filled of regret and anger. It was like I had been mutilated. I did not know for a moment why. “Then I realized that someone was standing over me.” This example shows Gene to be at the least angry that he was responsible for Finny’s crash because he struck Quackenbush when referred to as maimed. Alaska is Miles’s friend and love interest in Looking For Alaska. Miles is also entangled with Takumi and the Colonel. They are both friends of Miles, so they become entangled. Alaska, like Finny, encouraged Miles break school rules and play pranks with the weekday warriors. Miles was very saddened by Alaska’s demise and spent time with his Colonel to try to find out what happened. The Colonel and Miles spent a lot of time together trying to understand Alaska’s death. Miles is partially responsible, since he and Colonel let Alaska drive intoxicated. In other words, Miles felt regret for his irresponsible actions as well as grief over Alaska’s demise. It is clear from these connections that a unique and interesting character must have strong ties to the main character.

Finny’s and Alaska’s third major purpose is to illustrate that anyone may suffer an internal breakdown. Finny does not accept that things aren’t perfect. He refuses, despite evidence to the contrary, to accept that sports have losers. He doesn’t believe Gene caused his accident. ‘Of course you didn’t'” (Knowles 62). He keeps this attitude despite the fact that it is obvious that Gene caused his accident. This ultimately causes him to collapse internally. Finny becomes more and upset. Finny was not happy with the fact that the accident happened. This is probably because he found out later that Gene caused it. Finny was then injured when he fell down stairs. He was also killed by his own bone marrow. Finny’s fatality is symbolic in that it shows the collapse of his inner self, by way of a death caused by an internal cause. Alaska’s fatal accident was caused by her drunken driving. Her internal collapse is ultimately due to her mother’s passing and her indifference at the time. Due to this, she can be very impulsive. Miles and The Colonel realized that her mother was involved when they considered the circumstances around her death. Alaska was still angry and regretful about her mother’s passing because she did nothing to stop it. From these examples, we can conclude that Finny’s and Alaska’s uniqueness and extraordinaryness would not save either of them.

John Green and John Knowles both demonstrate how important it is to have a unique, interesting character. It is also possible to explore the purpose of the connection between the character and the narrator. This connection, it turns out, is essential because without it neither Alaska nor Finny would have any significance. A character’s internal breakdown can also have an impact on the story, even if it was caused by another character. All these factors show how important it is to have high-quality character in a book.