A Separate Peace Character Analysis Essay

Major Players
I identified the first major player in the novel as Phineas. The quote I feel began his role reads: “No one but Phineas could think up such a crazy idea. He of course saw nothing the slightest bit intimidating about it. He wouldn’t, or wouldn’t admit it if he did. Not Phineas.” (14) This quote sets the reader up by describing the sort of person Finny : a daredevil with wild ideas and an air of fearlessness about him.
The role of Gene Forrester, the narrator of the novel, starts with the first line of the book. “I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oldly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before.” (9) The plot of A Separate Peace is him retelling those months at Devon, so his role began with him returning fifteen years later and seeing the school grounds, bringing back memories.
Elwin “Leper” Lepellier- “Leper closed his mouth as though forever. He didn’t argue or refuse. He didn’t back away. He became inanimate.” (17)
Brinker Hadley’s role begins in chapter seven when he picked on Gene while he had the room to himself. “‘Here you are in your solitary splendor,’ he went on genially. ‘I can see you have a real influence around here. This big room all to yourself. I wish I knew how

Gene realized that Phineas didn’t view himself as his rival and that he actually cared about him. He relayed, “[h]e had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he. I couldn’t stand this” (59). Gene got angry at Finny, and probably partially at himself, for not feeling any jealousy toward him, for having the moral high ground. If not for Gene and Finny’s exchange, Gene would not have reason to jounce the limb in the first place, because while he viewed Finny as the bar to beat, he never had thoughts of doing something to harm