In A Separate Peace, the game Blitzball symbolizes Finny's character and impacts his relationship with Gene. In Chapter 3, Finny creates his game and names it Blitzball after the word blitzkrieg. In this game, Finny changes the rules constantly to give himself the advantage. Because of this, no one was as good at the game as him. Earlier in the chapter, Gene said that one of Finny’s rules was “‘You always win at sports’. This ‘you’ was collective. Everyone always won at sports. When you played a game, you won.” (Knowles 35) Finny is a very competitive person and sees everything he does as a competition. In this book, Gene sees Finny as his leader. He follows him no matter what he does, even if Gene does not especially want to. Gene also spends a lot of time admiring his friend and explaining all of the amazing things he can do. He states that no one was better at Blitzball than Finny and the rest of the boys weren't very good at it. He says “What difference did it make? It was just a game. It was good Finny could shine at it.” (Knowles 40) Gene admires the way that Finny plays the game so well. The creation of the game Blitzball shows how Gene looks up to Finny and the character of their relationship.
I agree, but I also think that there is more to Finny in his relationship with Gene. Gene shows this slight jealousy that Finny is so athletic but then he later reveals how he loves having a friend that is good at something that Gene is not as good at. "Finny could shine with everyone, he attracted everyone he met. I was glad of that too. Naturally. He was my roommate and my best friend." (Knowles 40). Even though Gene shows this jealousy, I think that it is because they show different interests that they have such a great friendship together. Later in the book, I think that jealousy could be a key component in their friendship and even though Gene and Finny are close now, they need to be careful of being jealous of one another or else it will hurt their friendship.
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