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A Separate Peace: Ignorance of the Human Heart

2005-10-31T21:12:25-04:00

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A Separate Peace: Ignorance of the Human Heart

2005-10-31T21:11:20-04:00

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Quote, "Darkness is unleashed at diffrent times"

2002-10-19T14:00:00-04:00

An unknown poet, once said “We all have darkness inside of us that is unleashed at different times,” which is a quote about life. In the novel A Separate Peace by Robert Knowles, darkness came out in jealousy and anger. Brinker, Gene, and Quakenbush, all have darkness’s that is expressed in the novel. Brinker is a popular politician at Devon and is jealous of the friendship between Finny and Gene. He asks many questions and makes assumptions about Finney’s fall to hurt Gene. Brinker kept asking Gene if he picked Finny as a roommate because “he wouldn’t be back this fall, so [Gene] would get the room for [himself]…. it was fixed,” he declared. (P.79-80) These insults and theories hurt Gene and made him ask himself about the tragedy. Brinker was not only jealous of Gene’s friendship but also that he had a room for himself. When Finny comes back to Devon, Brinker revives his darkness. When Genes and Finny relationship gets better then ever, Brinker holds a trail. The trail is held due to Brinkers beliefs of how “Gene purposely pushed Finny out of the tree” and ruined his athletic life.” (P.) In the novel, Brinkers jealously allows his destitution to divulge. Gene also liberates his darkness in A Separate Peace. He thought Finny was trying to ruin him, by distracting him from his studies. “Finny had deliberately set out to wreck [his] studies” which explained Blitzball and the nightly meeting of Super Suicide Society. (P.45) Gene states many times that he tries to be better then Finny. This is factual because his resentment starts to illustrate through his other emotions. At Devon, Gene was just a admirer and follower of Finny, the enormous athlete. Finally, at worst, Gene unleashes his darkness causing Finny to fall from the tree. His jealousy and anger build up inside of him until he can no longer seize it. Gene took a step forward “bent [his] knees and jounced the limb” which Finny was standing on. When Finny falls. Gene jumps from refinement to evil. Genes vice was triggered when he becomes jealous of Finny, the almost perfect athlete. He then makes up lies trying to convince himself that Finny is wrong until he emotionally breaks down, causing himself to inform Finny the truth of the tree incident. Quakenbush is head of the crew team at Devon who is always teased and harassed by

Competition between Gene and Phineas

2002-04-02T14:00:00-04:00

Often times between both the best of friends and the bitterest of enemies there is competition. It can be a friendly competition over some minor event or goal, or a ruthless quest between two rivals who will stop at nothing to be first to reach the pinnacle. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene finds himself in a self-created competition with both himself and Phineas. Gene first is in competition with his own emotions and his loathing of Finny which conflicts with his friendship with Finny. Gene also is attempting to attain the position of Valedictorian and in his mind if he reaches this goal he would be not only Finny’s equal but actually better than him. The toughest of all for Gene, is how he is always competing to satisfy both his own academic expectations and Finny’s expectations of him. Gene is a confused teenager, who does what he feels is the proper thing to do, though it isn’t what he really thinks deep inside of him. For example, when speaking of the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session, Gene says, At that time it would never have occurred to me to say, ‘I don’t feel like it tonight,’ which was the plain truth every night. I was subject to the dictates of my mind, which gave me the maneuverability of a straight jacket…I went without a thought of protest. Here, Gene is acting out the feelings he holds on the surface, which is his friendship with Finny, even though he only loathes Finny even more for, in Gene’s opinion, a naïve idea that Gene doesn’t ever need to study and can devote much of his time for the dumb antics and idea that Finny always has. Yet, Gene has had this mask up for so long, he almost is to the point that he doesn’t even notice when he makes these agreements that are conflicting with his true emotions. Later, after agreeing to go to the beach, he thinks to himself after Finny tells him that he is his best friend: I should have told him then that he was my best friend also and rounded off what he had said. I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth. Gene is stopped by that gut feeling that we all have, that

Inner Evil

2001-06-25T14:00:00-04:00

We all have a darkness inside of us that is unleashed at different times in our lives. It can come out when we are jealous, angry, or just harassing someone. In the novel, A Separate Peace by Robert Knowles, Gene, the main character, is affected by a few evils inside a person and he also releases his own evil. Three characters from the novel, Quackenbush, Brinker, and Gene, all have darkness inside of them that they let come out in different ways. The first character from A Separate Peace that lets his evil out is Quackenbush. Quackenbush is the head of the crew team at Devon School. He is always teased and harassed by the other students and consequently, Quackenbush has low self-esteem. He feels that by making fun of Gene, unleashing his inner darkness, that it will make him feel better. For the time being it makes him feel big and important. The first incident is when Gene starts as the Assistant Crew Manager and Quackenbush is above him. “…’Get some towels’…’How many?’…’As many as you can carry. That won’t be too many.’…” (69). Quackenbush hurts Gene another time too. After making fun of Gene, Gene remarks, “…You, Quackenbush, don’t know anything about who I am…Listen you maimed son-of-a-bitch…”(71). Then a fistfight breaks out between the two. Quackenbush doesn’t like when Gene stands up for himself, he cannot stand it. He wants to hurt Gene because he can tell by taking the position of Assistant Crew Manager that Gene has low self-esteem. Quackenbush lets out his inner darkness at Gene because he wants to feel momentous; he wants to feel important and that is one way that someone in this novel lets out their inner depravity. The second character I have chosen is Brinker. Brinker, who is the popular politician at Devon School, is very jealous of the friendship that Gene and Finny share. He says many things about the fall and how it happened to hurt Gene. “…’I’ll bet you knew all the time Finny wouldn’t be back this fall. That’s why you picked him as a roommate, right?’ [Brinker asks.]’What? No, of course not. How could I know a thing like that in advance?’…’You fixed it. You knew all the time, I bet it was all your doing.’…” (79-80). Brinker was jealous of not only Gene and Finny’s friendship, but also Gene having a room all to

A Separate Peace

2001-06-10T14:00:00-04:00

What point of view does each character show in regards to their attitude to the war? The war is a symbol of how things are not always what they seem. Recruiting posters and propaganda to join the army convinced many boys into thinking the war is an exciting adventure. “The characters Gene, Finny, and Leper are used as opposing forces struggle between that cold reality of war and a separate peace”(Brian, Gatten), A peace away from the real war and all the terrible things that come. The attitudes towards war of Finny, Gene and Leper reflect their approach to life. Finny does not face the reality in life nor the war, Leper (stands on the sidelines) is isolated from life and the war, while Gene is a follower in life and the war. Finny does not face the reality in life nor the war by, finny first begins to create games. Because Phineas cannot face the reality of the real war. For him, these games are representative of the war. Finny made up these games and he made it so that he could be in control. This is just like Finny ‘s world of separate peace. Also finny does not fully understand the impact of war on people. He does not understand that war kills people physically and mentally. He also does not understand how it affects a person’s life. Finny is not present for the beginning of the fall session at Devon and as a result, the statement “Peace had deserted Devon”(knowles, pg. 132). Is true indicates the lack of peace…”the peace that the school had come to know when finny was present.”(Brian, Gatten) “With the lack of this peace, the door is open for the reality that is war, to enter”. (Brian, Gatten) Finny has his own reality, about the war. That is why he created the games to the substitute for the war. Leper’s attitude towards to the war is that he feels that was does not affect him. Leper is much like Finny because of his innocent, romantic view of the world, he loves nature and especially skiing during the winter. Leper is not popular at Devon due to his oddities, but he does not give any attention to such things. He joins the army after seeing a film about their ski troops although he is not even fighting is the war; he is shocked to find military life to be

Green Gene

2001-06-03T14:00:00-04:00

A Separate Peace by John Knowles recounts the friendship between two friends, Gene and Finny, during the year before they turn 18 and join World War II. It begins fifteen years in the future with Gene returning to his Alma Mata and remembering the drama and growth of his last year at Devon. Gene was rather naive and shy, concerned more with his academics. Gene was also very doubting and insecure about his own abilities. Phineas, or Finny was confident, the athlete and ringleader. Liked by all, he always had a crazy plan brewing in his mind. Daring and brave, his entire objective was to enjoy life. Finny persuades Gene to be bolder and more spontaneous, yet when Finny was not around Gene lost that sense of poise and self-assurance. Consequently, this created opposition within Gene’s mind. Gene both admired and envied Finny. Gene detested Finny’s constant and sanguine attitude toward life because it epitomized a serenity that he could never achieve because of his own insecurity. Phineas had this mindset that permitted him to see life from a different point of view. “The Devon faculty had never experienced a student who combined a calm ignorance of the rules and a winning urge to be good, who seemed to love the school truly and deeply, and never more then when he was breaking the regulations, a model student who was most comfortable in the truant’s corner (Knowles, 16)”. He had a charisma and a persona that mesmerized the student body as well as the staff. No one ever knew what he was going to do next or the reason he would give and that was exactly the way Finny liked it. The incident when he wore the pink shirt and explained his motive demonstrates not only that Finny was unpredictable but also shows his influence among the school community. He viewed the shirt as his emblem, his way of celebrating the fact that the Allies had just bombed Central Europe. Gene summarizes Finny’s amount of sway best when he states, “No one else could have done so with out some risk of having it torn from his back (Knowles, 18)”. Even when faced with stark realities, Phineas concocted some fantastic story to feed his disbelief in unsettling events. The most blatantly dismal thread occurring in the book was the War, in which Finny believes that it is a sham made up by some

Rivalry in A Separate Peace

2001-05-22T14:00:00-04:00

Every person feels rivalry or competition towards others at some point in their lives. This rivalry greatly affects our ability to understand others, and this eventually results in paranoia and hostility. It is a part of human nature, that people coldly drive ahead for their gain alone. Man's inhumanity towards man is a way for people to protect themselves from having pain inflicted on them by others, and achieving their goals and desires without the interference of others. This concept of man's inhumanity to man is developed in A Separate Peace as the primary conflict in the novel centres on the main character, Gene, and his inner-battles with feelings of jealousy, paranoia, and inability to understand his relationship with his best friend Phineas. Competition is further demonstrated by the occurrence of World War II. It is shown that, "There were few relationships among us (the students) at Devon not based on rivalry." (p. 37) It is this rivalry and competition between the boys at Devon that ripped their friendships apart. In the early pages of the novel, Finny confesses that Gene is his best friend. This is considered a courageous act as the students at Devon rarely show any emotion. And rather than coming back with similar affection, Gene holds back and says nothing. Gene simply cannot handle the fact that Finny is so compassionate, so athletic, so ingenuitive, so perfect. As he put it, "Phineas could get away with anything." (p. 18) In order to protect himself from accepting Finny's compassion and risking emotional suffering, Gene creates a silent rivalry with Finny, and convinced himself that Finny is deliberately attempting to ruin his schoolwork. Gene decides he and Finny are jealous of each other, and reduces their friendship to cold trickery and hostility. Gene becomes disgusted with himself after weeks of the silent rivalry. He finally discovers the truth, that Finny only wants the best for Gene, and had no hidden evil intentions. This creates a conflict for Gene as he is not able to deal with Finny's purity and his own dark emotions. On this very day Finny wants to jump off of the tree branch into the Devon river at the same time as Gene, a "double jump" (p. 51), he says, as a way of bonding. It was this decision, caused by Finny's affection for Gene and outgoing ways that resulted in drastic change for the rest

Leper Lepellier's Functions as a Minor Character

2001-02-10T13:00:00-05:00

Upon returning to his school fifteen years after graduating, Gene Forrester, recalled his days at the Devon School in a surreal sense. In his own words, “In the deep, tacit way in which feeling becomes stronger than thought, I had always felt that the Devon School came into existence the day I entered it, was vibrantly real while I was a student there, and then blinked out like a candle the day I left.” Helping embellish this reality were his friends, including Leper Lepellier, who appeared in only five scenes in A Separate Peace. Elwin “Leper” Lepellier’s role as a minor character was vital to the story, although not nearly as visible as Gene’s or Finny’s. His appearances stole the attention of the reader, altered each character’s own perceptions of the war, and forced the main character to act and think in ways he would not have otherwise. Chapter Ten’s journey to Leper’s Christmas location is a trip away from Devon both physically and emotionally. Leper steals the scene by inviting Gene to his home, proceeding to unsettle the reader to the extent that he cannot concentrate on the other characters. Quiet and subdued, Leper spent much of his time outdoors, sketching snails and trees, photographing beaver dams. He was what Brinker so scornfully called a naturalist. This gentle hobby extracted virtually no interest from the reader, besides a knowledge of Leper’s eccentric and lonely personality. Because he predictably behaved this way, reading the few tortured pages of his hallucinations in the army elicits strong emotion and reader interest; Finny and the Devon group of friends were insignificant compared to the horrific images Leper conjured in the reader’s mind. Gene felt the same emotions as the reader: “Don’t tell me who’s got me and who hasn’t got me. Who do you think you’re talking to? Stick to your snails, Lepellier.” Shocked at what his friend has become, Gene mentions his naturalistic manner, hoping to straighten him out. At this point, the reader is as helpless as Gene, wondering why Leper has changed, what the hallucinations mean, and most importantly, what will happen to between them in the pages to come. Leper also directs the reader back to Finny’s accident, pointing a guilty finger at Gene when he says he and everyone he knew were all “savages underneath.” When Gene finally runs out of Vermont and away from Leper’s insanity, the reader

A Separate Peace - Denial of Truth

2001-01-20T13:00:00-05:00

The novel A Separate Peace focuses mainly around a 17 year old named Gene Forrester and his psychological development. The story is set in a boys boarding school in USA during World War II. There are four main boys in the novel and they all undergo major character changes through the story. One of them goes crazy, and the others experience severe attitude changes. Gene is caught right in the center of these changes. He is very close with all of the other three boys, and thus all of the changes affect him very much. Due to all the tension occurring in this novel because of the war and events going on at the school, there is a lot of denial of truth happening. Three of the four boys mentioned earlier deny the truth at sometime in the story. This denying of truth sometimes ends with the person who committed the fault in a bad condition at the end of the book, and sometimes in good condition. So it can be said that there were both positive and negative results for each of the denials of the truth, but these will be explained more in-depth in the following paragraphs. Although it starts after half the book is finished, one of the major examples of denying the truth in the novel is Finny denying the reality of the war. Though it is disclosed at the end that Finny knew all along about the war, he succeeds, after a little time, in making Gene truly believe in the non-existence of the war (although Gene claims that he did not really believe the story, his behavior around his classmates and his actions say otherwise). The first result we see of this denial is Finny’s confession of his bitterness towards the world because of his loss. This destroys the image we have of Finny as a “perfect” person because it shows that he blames the world for his accident. It also stuns Gene so much that he begins to do pull-ups, even though he has never done even ten before. With Finny’s verbal help, Gene manages to do thirty. This solidifies the friendship between them. After this moment, Finny decides to take Gene into his confidence and tells him he wanted to go to the 1944 Olympics, but that Gene will have to go instead, and goes on to start training Gene. Finally, after many

A Separate Trust

2000-11-16T13:00:00-05:00

Friendship is a special bond between two people; a bond that depends on one important element, trust. The book A Separate Peace focuses on the relationship between two adolescent boys in prep school. Phineas and Gene had two completely different personalities. Phineas, athletic and adventurous, had a wild imagination, and

Cohesion with Contrast - Gene vs. Finny

2000-10-11T14:00:00-04:00

Although a friendship often implies many similarities, Gene and Finny also appear

A Separate Peace

2000-05-03T14:00:00-04:00

Sitting in my third grade classroom we chattered anxiously, waiting for the spelling quizzes to be passed back. My teacher placed them all facing down on our desks, a rather pointless effort when she was already aware that at any moment the room would burst into havoc with yells of "what did you get?", shouting numbers back and forth, and of course superior comments from the students proud of their marks. I quickly flipped mine over and grinned at the 8/10 scrawled in red marker near the top of the page. "What did you get?" sure enough my friend Jenny thrust me her paper. As I stared down at her 100% sitting aside a bright yellow smiley sticker I felt a familiar twinge of jealousy. From that day on I had a secret goal to achieve higher marks than my friend. I can not remember when this rivalry ended, but I do know that it is normal behavior. Each person feels rivalry or competition to other humans, for the majority of their lifetime. This rivalry greatly affects our ability to understand others, and this eventually results in war, discrimination, and enmity. Children are definitely culprits for acting inhumane to each other with teasing, competition, and often hurtful remarks. Although this is the way children often act, it is in the teenage years realization, along with careful thought and consideration, brings each individual to understand wider prospects of human nature; that people coldly drive ahead for themselves alone. Man’s inhumanity1 to man is a way for people to protect themselves from having pain inflicted on them by fellow humans, and achieving their goals and desires free from interference of others. The concept of man’s inhumanity to man is developed in John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace. The primary conflict in this novel centers on the main character, Gene, and his battling of jealousy, paranoia, and inability to understand his relationship with his best friend Phineas. Yet the larger battle of man’s inhumanity to man is portrayed by the backdrop of World War II. Gene Forrester is an average, studious, young man attending Devon school in New Hampshire during the second World War. His roommate at Devon, Phineas (otherwise known as Finny) sends Gene on an unexpected journey of self discovery. Finny represents man in his innocence, a kind of edenic2 Adam. He is very athletic, honest and trusting. Finny is one who

A Separate Peace - Phineas and Carpe Diem

2000-01-09T13:00:00-05:00

"He was everywhere, he enjoyed himself hugely, he laughed out loud at passing sea gulls"(39). This line is describing Phineas, or Finny, and how he lives life to it’s fullest and seizes the day. Finny is an example of living the "carpe diem" (seize the day) philosophy from the movie "Dead Poets Society." There are a few examples in the first part of this novel of how Finny takes advantage of life. The first example is how he enjoys himself so much at the beach. Gene describes how Finny has such a great time at the beach as seen in the opening quote. He says he runs all over the place and jumps into waves, laughing at the seagulls, when most others would be lying on the beach being lazy. Another example of Finny living a full life is that he makes up his own game just because he doesn’t want to waste his time playing badminton. The strange thing is that this game turns out to be a popular game in the novel which is still played 15 years later as the author says. Finny invents this game just on a spur of the moment, making up the rules as he goes along, you can see that he surely doesn’t want to waste any of his ability. Which points you to the last example. The last example is concerning his incredible athletic ability. Finny and Gene are in the pool one day, and they read the plaque that holds the swimming record times. Finny looks at one and decides that he can beat that time record. He tries, and he beats the record. Gene wants him to do it on front of an official judge. Finny Refuses and says "No, I just wanted to see if I could do it. Now I know"(35). This tells you that he lives life to it’s fullest, since he is just doing this to see if he can. Most people wouldn’t even think about trying to see if they could break the record, they would be too lazy to go find a stop watch anyway. He runs around and has fun all day at the beach when everyone else is just lying around being lazy, he doesn’t want to waste his time playing boring games like badminton, so he makes up his own game which turns out to be a hit with the other students

The Role of Minor Characters in A Separate Peace

2000-01-09T13:00:00-05:00

Without the minor characters the story "A Separate Peace" would be missing major points and it wouldn’t run smoothly. The minor characters in the story play an important role in the way the story falls together and in causing Finny to die. The minor characters in this story set up kind of props for other things to happen in the story. For example Brinker’s conflict with Gene. The first part of the conflict begins in the butt room where Brinker brings Gene after Finny has his fall. Brinker tries to tell everyone that Gene in fact did knock Finny off of the tree. Gene gets out by making up a crazy story but he is still mad at Brinker for this so he must get even. So later on in the story, at the winter carnival, Gene gives Brinker a reason to hold a stigma against him. Gene, caught up in the excitement, and getting back at Brinker for the butt room incident, pours some cider down Brinker’s throat. This cider almost chokes Brinker which causes him to be angry at Gene and he must get even with Gene later. So even later in the story, as his revenge, Brinker sets up another trial about Gene’s pushing Finny off of the tree. He gets everyone into his ""court room" to watch the trial and he tries to prove that Gene did in fact push Finny off. The result of all of this revenge and the result of Brinker’s existence is that Finny finds out the truth which is that Gene did knock him out of the tree on purpose. The major result is that Finny dies because of Brinker. So Brinker, being a minor character, has the role of partly causing Finny to die in the end. If it wasn’t for Brinker, Finny would have still been alive. Minor characters also add plot and volume to the story and keep it alive. For example Leper’s going to the war. When Leper goes to the war, it is brought as a surprise. This is because Leper is not expected to be a war going type of guy. Leper is a quiet, non athletic guy, making him not a very ideal war person. Brinker would have been expected to be the first to enlist in the war because he is so big and athletic. This is one part of the minor characters adding

A Separate Peace - Symbolism

2000-01-07T13:00:00-05:00

In John Knowle’s A Separate Peace, symbols are used to develop and advance the themes of the novel. One theme is the lack of an awareness of the real world among the students who attend the Devon Academy. The war is a symbol of the "real world", from which the boys exclude themselves. It is as if the boys are in their own little world or bubble secluded from the outside world and everyone else. Along with their friends, Gene and Finny play games and joke about the war instead of taking it seriously and preparing for it. Finny organizes the Winter Carnival, invents the game of Blitz Ball, and encourages his friends to have a snowball fight. When Gene looks back on that day of the Winter Carnival, he says, "---it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace" (Knowles, 832). As he watches the snowball fight, Gene thinks to himself, "There they all were now, the cream of the school, the lights and leaders of the senior class, with their high IQs and expensive shoes, as Brinker had said, pasting each other with snowballs"(843). Another of the principal themes in this novel is the theme of maturity. The two rivers that are part of the Devon School property symbolize how Gene and Finny grow up through the course of the novel. The Devon River is preferred by the students because it is above the dam and contains clean water. It is a symbol of childhood and innocence because it is safe and simple. It is preferred which shows how the boys choose to hold onto their youth instead of growing up. The Naguamsett is the disgustingly dirty river which symbolizes adulthood because of its complexity. The two rivers intermingle showing the boys’ changes from immature individuals to slightly older and wiser men. Sooner or later, Gene and Phineas, who at the beginning of the novel are extremely immature, have to face reality. Signs of their maturity appear when the boys have a serious conversation about Finny’s accident. Finny realizes that Gene did shake the tree limb purposely so that he would fall. However, he knows that this action was spontaneous, and that Gene never meant to cause him life-long grief. Finny sympathetically says to his best friend, "Something just seized you. It

A Separate Peace: Character Sketch of Leper Lepellier

1999-12-16T13:00:00-05:00

Leper Lepellier: quite an interesting character indeed! One minute searching for beaver dams, the next moving on to something totally unrelated. He most definitely did not go along with the crowd! He didn’t care that the rest of his class was off to clear snow from the railroad tracks - he had to find that beaver dam! He, in a way, was like Chet

Artificial vs. Natural in A Separate Peace

1999-10-21T14:00:00-04:00

Someone once said that being yourself, being who you are, is a successful rebellion. Gene Forrester, one of the main characters in John Knowles's novel, A Separate Peace should have taken this advice. Throughout the novel, Gene acted artificially, disguising his true self. He lived in fear of people finding out what he was really like. Phineas, Gene's best friend and the other main character in this novel, on the other hand, acted naturally around people. He was not afraid of people seeing who he really was. In John Knowles's novel, A Separate Peace, Gene acted artificially, while Phineas acted naturally. To begin with, Gene Forrester acted artificially. There are several instances throughout the novel where Gene disguises himself or is influenced by artificial things. Towards the beginning of the novel Gene tells the reader that he was a half inch taller than Finny ("I had been claiming five feet nine inches before he became my roommate..." (Gene Pg. 8) and that Finny weighed ten pounds more than he did. "He weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, a galling ten pounds more than I did..." (Gene Pg. 8) Because Gene mentioned those facts, the reader can tell that even having a slight height and weight advantage or disadvantage to Finny were important to him. What people, especially Finny, thought about him worried him. "...I would have lost face with Phineas, and that would have been unthinkable." (Gene Pg. 26) Later in the novel, when Finny wanted to wear a pink shirt to school, Gene told him it would make him look like a "fairy". "Pink! It makes you look like a fairy!' (Gene Pg. 17) Gene knew that people might question Finny's masculinity and ridicule him so he spoke up. Gene would have never taken such a risk as wearing a pink shirt because it was not socially acceptable at Devon School. This again points out Gene's obsession with what people thought of him. Gene had a cautious, competitive nature and let grades and trying to outdo Finny run his life. When Finny broke the school's swimming record, Gene did not understand why he did not want people to know about it. "The worst thing is that there weren't any witnesses. Tomorrow. We'll get the coach here, and all the official timekeepers, and I'll call up the Devonian and send a reporter and a photographer-...Not say anything about it! When

Symbols in A Separate Peace

1999-08-06T14:00:00-04:00

In John Knowle's A Separate Peace, symbols are used to develop and advance the themes of the novel. One theme is the lack of an awareness of the real world among the students who attend the Devon Academy. The war is a symbol of the "real world", from which the boys exclude themselves. It is as if the boys are in their own little world or bubble secluded from the outside world and everyone else. Along with their friends, Gene and Finny play games and joke about the war instead of taking it seriously and preparing for it. Finny organizes the Winter Carnival, invents the game of Blitz Ball, and encourages his friends to have a snowball fight. When Gene looks back on that day of the Winter Carnival, he says, "---it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace" (Knowles, 832). As he watches the snowball fight, Gene thinks to himself, "There they all were now, the cream of the school, the lights and leaders of the senior class, with their high IQs and expensive shoes, as Brinker had said, pasting each other with snowballs"(843). Another of the principal themes in this novel is the theme of maturity. The two rivers that are part of the Devon School property symbolize how Gene and Finny grow up through the course of the novel. The Devon River is preferred by the students because it is above the dam and contains clean water. It is a symbol of childhood and innocence because it is safe and simple. It is preferred which shows how the boys choose to hold onto their youth instead of growing up. The Naguamsett is the disgustingly dirty river which symbolizes adulthood because of its complexity. The two rivers intermingle showing the boys' changes from immature individuals to slightly older and wiser men. Sooner or later, Gene and Phineas, who at the beginning of the novel are extremely immature, have to face reality. Signs of their maturity appear when the boys have a serious conversation about Finny's accident. Finny realizes that Gene did shake the tree limb purposely so that he would fall. However, he knows that this action was spontaneous, and that Gene never meant to cause him life-long grief. Finny sympathetically says to his best friend, "Something just seized you. It

A Separate Peace - Thematic Analysis

1999-03-26T13:00:00-04:00

An analysis of John Knowles A Separate Peace brings up the theme of man's inhumanity to his fellow man. What makes this novel unique is that in protesting war, Knowles never overtly referred to the blood and gore of war; he showed the consequences of war, some paralleling the nature of war and some simply laying out how World War II affected noncombatants thousand miles away. There have been many books written about war, what happens, why it happens, and why wars should stop. Knowles explains through the life of Finny why war never will cease, with only one death in the entire book; a quiet one at that. When Gene is responsible for Finny's fall off the tree, the reader is in some confusion as to what really happened. All the book reads at this juncture is "Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step near him, and then my knees bounced and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud." The reader does not know whether it was accidental or intentional. It is not until later that Finny realizes that Gene is responsible for his crippling, and what a natural thing it was to do. Gene bounced the branch just to see if he could make the invincible Finny fall; at least, this is why Gene claims he did it. This is true, but at some level, Gene was scared of Finny, of his confidence, his abilities, and his potential for breaking records. Consider Gene's paranoia over Finny's attempts to make him adventurous. Gene interprets these genuine acts of friendship as attempts to prevent him from reaching the top of the academic ladder. This paranoia parallels war in that after it is declared, no one is safe. Countries, leaders, people suspicious of all who are perceived as a threat, causing them to lash out at anyone even peripherally involved. Adequately proven in A Separate Peace, there are also historical examples: the Nazi death camps, the American Japanese-American relocation camps, and the McCarthyism of the fifties. Apparently, in America, the Constitution rules until war is declared, then paranoia and vindictiveness take charge. When Gene had the opportunity to get back at Finny, he did, which is