Hiren, you hit the nail on the head when you said that the character development of McMurphy and Gene were almost identical. Throughout both stories, A Separate Peace by John Knowles and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Kenneth Kesey, the main characters are illustrated as innocent and there to serve a good purpose.
The main difference that I found was that McMurphy was introduced as a devious character, where Gene was introduced as an innocent character and a great friend. Gene and Phineas were said to have a mischievous and typical relationship that teenage boys were supposed to have. “I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn’t help envying him that a little, which was perfectly normal. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little” (Knowles 18). Then, as A Separate Peace develops, this friendship becomes rivalry. “To keep silent about this amazing happening deepened the shock for me. It made Finny seem too unusual for – not friendship, but too unusual for rivalry” (37). Eventually, Gene Forrester ends up stating this: “Only Phineas never was afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone....All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way – if ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy” (196). This is a confession as to why he was so jealous of his deranged friend.
As for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I don't really look forward to writing much on this book. For one, I thought it was the most terrible novel I ever had to read. I wouldn't even call this book a novel--I would call it a disaster and a mistake of publishing. If Kenneth Kesey approached me as an editor/editing company, I would have read the first page and denied any publishing rights for this book. It has damaged the public, making the insane people believe that they can get away with being corrupt for the rest of their life. No wonder Ken Kesey was at Stanford having LSD and other "hard drugs" tested on him. No sane person would ever write about this mental hospital in such gruesome depth as he did. After all, who expects to have a good read when the opening sentence of the book is "They're out there" (Kesey, 1). Well I have news for you. Maybe this could have saved the people in the mental hospital from the absolute power of the insane side of the mind: NO ONE IS OUT THERE. This book should not even be open for discussion.
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