“A Separate Peace” by John Knowles (post 1): What does it mean when Gene sees Phineas in mirror: romantic friendship, literary doubling, or multiple personality?

In 1942, Gene (first-person narrator) and Phineas (Finny) are 16-year-old roommates at an American boys’ boarding school. At age 18, they will face the draft into WWII. The plot revolves around the nature of their relationship, which may be one or more of the following:

1. romantic friendship (either nonsexual or implicitly homosexual)

2. literary doubling (Finny represents a latent side of Gene’s personality)

3. multiple personality (Finny represents Gene’s alternate personality)

Gene and Phineas are of the same height and general appearance. Their clothes fit each other. Gene is a top student. Finny is a star athlete. Finny’s voice is “hypnotic” (1, pp. 14, 25, 54). Why is the word “hypnotic” used repeatedly? It implies that what is going on involves altered states of consciousness (perhaps the altered consciousness of alternate personalities).

Gene sees Phineas in the Mirror

After Phineas is hospitalized for a broken leg, Gene has this experience:

“I spent as much time as I could alone in our room, trying to empty my mind of every thought, to forget where I was, even who I was…I decided to put on his clothes. We wore the same size, and although he always criticized mine he used to wear them frequently, quickly forgetting what belonged to him and what to me…

“But when I looked in the mirror…I was Phineas, Phineas to the life. I even had his humorous expression on my face, his sharp, optimistic awareness…The sense of transformation stayed with me throughout the evening, and even when I undressed and went to bed…it was only on waking up that this illusion was gone, and I was confronted with myself…(1, p. 62).

Search “mirror” and “mirrors” in this blog for previous discussions, and other literary examples, of this known phenomenon of multiple personality: seeing alternate personalities in the mirror.

1. John Knowles. A Separate Peace [1959]. New York, Scribner, 2003.