The Barrier of Friendship In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, two boys named Gene and Finny attend a New England boarding school, where they learn to overcome challenging obstacles and make life-changing decisions as they come of age. The boys live in a microcosm of World War II, with loyalty and deception constantly thrown around. Gene is an introverted, hard working intellectual and his friend, Phineas, is an outgoing, daring athlete. When jealousy and competition start to come in play, tensions begin to rise. Through Gene and Finny’s perspective on jealousy and the competition between the friends, John Knowles illustrates their rivalry as the barrier dividing the boys and their friendship. Gene’s perspective on jealousy and competition …show more content…
When Gene comes to terms with the accident causing Finny’s injury and leading to his death, Gene finds his separate peace. As Gene walks around the Devon School, fifteen years after being a student, he says, “I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there” (204). Here Gene’s recognized confession demonstrates that he has removed himself from his innocence, thus allowing him to acknowledge accountability for Finny’s injury. Gene also takes away with him an understanding of how Finny never faces an enemy and completely loses his image of innocence. After his confession, Gene points out, “Only Phineas never was afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone. Other people experienced this fearful shock somewhere, this sighting of the enemy, and so began an obsessive labor of defense, began to parry the menace they saw facing them by developing a particular frame of mind” (204). This valuable comprehension now follows Gene and his separate peace, because he knows one who has no hatred is not afraid of any enemy. Although symbolizing an image of peace, Finny finds his separate peace once he accepts the presences of the time period’s event, specifically World War II. At the hospital, Finny was looking over the things that Gene had packed in his suitcase, because he broke his leg once again. While doing so, Finny tells Gene, “I wish to God there wasn’t any war. . . I don’t know if I can take this with a war on. . . What good are you in a war with a busted leg!” (189-190). Continuing to look through his suitcase, Finny goes on to Gene and says, “I’ve been writing to the Army and the Navy and the Marines and the Canadians and everybody else all winter. . .They all gave me the same answer after they saw the
In the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the narrator, Gene Forrester struggles to earn and preserve a separate peace. The story takes place in a remote boarding school named Devon, in New Hampshire. While Gene and Finny are in school, World War II is taking place. The author clearly explains an important story about the jealousy between Gene and his best friend, Phineas. Gene suspects that Finny is trying to sabotage his grades, and Gene allows his jealousy to control his actions. Therefore, Gene misinterprets their relationship by thinking that they shared enmity towards each other, and this caused Gene to enter a world of jealousy and hatred, which ultimately leads to Finny’s death. By examining this jealousy, John Knowles
At the Devon School, the climate of war creates an even greater impedance in the way of Gene and Phineas’ development, as now both characters must attempt to understand death. For Gene at such a young age, death has never been a part of his life until Phineas dies. Phineas has always been fated to die, but Gene is not able to comprehend this until Finny falls down the marble stairs at the First Academy Building. On revisiting the marble stairs, Gene recognizes their “exceptional hardness” (Knowles 11). The hardness that Gene speaks of is representative of the hardness of coping with war and death during such a crucial developmental time. This imagery is utilized by Knowles in A Separate Peace to define that until Gene recognizes the incomprehensible nature of war and death, he will never escape the liminal state. By watching Phineas fall down the marble stairs, Gene is enlightened to the fact that war is real, death cannot be avoided, and both can never be
The novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles describes the life highschool life of Gene Forrester through the flashbacks he experienced 15 years after his graduation. Throughout the novel Knowles takes us on a journey that revolves around Gene and his friend Finny as they go through their years in a private high school. While reading the novel one can see that Gene takes his hero journey during his highschool time as he makes the choices that will dictate not only his hero journey but his entire life.
Chapter 7: After the Fall also claims that Gene “wants to become what Finny was as a means to escape from himself”, however, the novel presents evidence that Finny was the one who tried to become Gene. The literary analysis claims Gene’s signing up for extracurricular activities and his wearing of Finny’s shirt suggest that Gene is
This story, A Separate Peace, exhibits interesting main characters which establish the frequent struggles of personal identity in adolescence. Gene's story is set in a boarding school called Devon during World War II and "The War" which he speaks of, gives overcast and grim feelings for his classes' future like an impending doom they cannot escape. Finny is a rebellious, charming, and very athletic boy. His charisma comes from his ability to make up rules and ideas on the spot and being able to get out of any trouble, which is magnetic to the other boys at Devon. Most of the teachers admired Phineas because he was the poster boy of boys not yet affected by the war, as mentioned by Gene when he says, "But there was another reason.
War is inescapable. During hard times, bad things often have a way of embedding themselves in the good. A Separate Peace is the story of disobedient schoolboys during the second World War, and the writing focuses on how they are directly and indirectly affected by it. In A Separate Peace, John Knowles portrays how the boys achieve a separate peace during the Winter Carnival, yet their actions and symbols are tinged with war-like imagery.
At the end of the book, once Finny has past away, Gene learns to live life for himself, not through somebody else. He was ready for anything. He no longer “owed” anybody anything. He had nothing else to suffer for. On page 195 it sums up the independence part of his relationship with Finny best. “I was ready for the war, now that I no longer had any hatred to contribute to it.
Finny’s care-free nature in the beginning of the book allows him to live vicariously, but as he matures, he begins to act somber until his death. This transformation not only allows Finny to mature, but it permits Gene to mature as well. After jumping off the tree for the first time in the beginning of the book, Finny attempts to weasel his way out of trouble by speaking his mind to a substitute teacher, Mr. Prud’homme, and it works. “Mr. Prud’homme released his breath with a sort of amazed laugh, stared at Finny for a while, and that was all there was to it.” (pg. 23) This shows Finny’s charisma and disregard for rules. By the end of the book, Finny had matured enough that he had almost lost the spark that he always had. Later in the book, Gene recalled Finny after an argument, “He brought his wide-set eyes up, his grin flashed and faded, and then he murmured, ‘Sure. There isn’t any war.’” (pg. 158) The war puts a burden on all the student’s shoulders, and Finny took it the hardest because he was not able to fight. The light in Finny’s eyes disappears a...
"A Separate Peace." Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Vol. 3. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp., 1993.
Gene feels very guilty. When the summer session ends, Gene goes on vacation and when he comes back to school he tries his best to avoid anything athletic. Brinker Hadley, a friend of the boys encourages Gene to enlist in the military and Gene complies. The morning of the enlistment, Finny shows up at school and Gene decides not to enlist because he feels like he is ditching Finny. Everyone is surprised when they see an innocent kid, Leper Lepellier enlist first. Later in the winter, Gene receives a telegram from Leper saying he has escaped and needs Gene to come visit him in Vermont only to find that Leper has gone crazy. Brinker believes that Gene had something to do with Finny’s fall in the summer and after school one day Brinker and others interrogate Finny and Gene. Without any luck, they bring in Leper and ask him questions. When the facts of Gene’s involvement in the fall are about to come in the open, Finny leaves and falls down the stairs, breaking his leg again. In the hospital, Gene comes once and is angrily rejected by Finny and the second time Gene apologizes for shaking the branch and the two are friends yet
A Separate Peace shares the lives of students at Devon that are forced into an unknown world of fear, problems, and uncertainty as they head off to World War II in training to fight and represent their country where they will find or lose themselves and make important decisions that will impact their future. The students at Devon are put into adulthood at an early age, having to fight and make their country proud, but they are left feeling pressure for a war they do not start. The students enter a world of unexpectedness and dread where they are forced into adulthood through war, and are exposed to self sacrifice, physical awareness, and patriotism.
When the present generation is asked about World War II, minds wander toward Hitler, the Nazis, and possibly one of the many movies “based” on true events. This generation is completely unattached to the naive soldiers who fought against the notorious Hitler and Nazis. The horrors that young persons experienced during this time are completely unimaginable, except when told through a realistic story highlighting the emotional trauma young boys endured during that time through the novel A Separate Peace. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, highlights the multiple meanings of “separate peace” as both a title and theme. These areas are symbolized by the setting, characters, and plot elements within the story, showing the true trauma of growing up in a war-torn
John Knowles writes a compelling realistic fiction about the lives of two teenage boys throughout the start of World War II in his novel A Separate Peace. Peter Yates the director of the movie plays the story out in a well organized theatrical manner. There are similarities and differences in these two works of art. However; there are also similarities.
He becomes aware of Finny’s endurance, as “nothing as he was growing up at home, nothing at Devon, nothing even about the war had broken his harmonious and natural unity. So at last [Gene] had” (203). Following Finny’s death, Gene states how absolutely nothing could break Finny, not even a war. But the evilness of his shadow and unconscious self could, and cause Finny’s death. One’s shadow can be toxic when displayed to the outside world, especially when it is not in check by the individual. Gene has accepted his dark side when he admits he had been the cause of his friend’s death. In the very end of the novel, Gene finally takes responsibility for all of his shadow’s actions against his best friend, as he thinks to himself, “I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there” (204). Gene’s transformation from the beginning of the novel to the end is clearly seen in this quotation, as he no longer denies his shadow’s existence and now claims responsibility of the darkness inside himself. He illustrates himself as being on active duty at all times at school, staying on guard for any of Finny’s tricks that may potentially cause him to fall behind in his studies. His war with Finny, whom he once
Peace is the antonym to war, an oxymoron, two terms rarely used in conjunction with one another. Throughout John Knowles’s, A Separate Peace, peace and war cross paths in many occasions. During the primary years of World War II, the students at Devon School went through much pain and distress but also built stronger friendships and harmony during their high school career. And just as the world works through the kinks and unoiled gears of life, the students dealt with the agony. They might not have all made it out alive, but they all learned something from it and became stronger through the experience. Where peace and war collide are some of the most momentous events in their lives that they remember forever. The summer before Phineas breaks his leg is a significant time when the students at Devon first experience peace and war. Other times are during the Winter Carnival and the moments prior to Phineas’ death.