Homosexuality In John Knowles A Separate Peace

“I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family’s strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case” (Knowles 194). So stricken with grief from the death of his close friend, Gene Forrester of John Knowles’ A Separate Peace is unable to truly process Phineas’ death. The life and death of Phineas plays an important role in molding Gene’s coming-of-age narrative. On the verge of registering on the military conscription for World War II, Gene is struggling to come to terms with his approaching adulthood at Devon Preparatory School. The hypermasculine society in which Phineas and Gene live creates

For Gene, his rite of passage into adulthood is his rejection of same-sex desire. Knowles uses a homosexual man’s denial of their sexuality to show how far one will go to meet the demands of society. Gene believes that he must reject this part of him because it does not fit in with the image of a man society demands. A man must be masculine, emotionless, and heterosexual. The denial of grief and love is the fundamental base of masculinity which is why Gene must reject Phineas in order for him to be able to fully accept his place in adulthood (Tribunella). The abdication of these feelings will allow Gene to fully mature into the model of adulthood society has. It is in this portrayal of the extreme change that Gene forces himself through where the reader can start to understand the viewpoint Knowles is trying to make. Early in the novel, Gene tries to reject his sexuality by shaking the tree branch he and Phineas are both standing on as Phineas asked him to jump “side by side” (Knowles 59). Phineas asking him to jump is representative of Phineas asking Gene to act on their feelings and partake in intercourse. Throughout the novel, it is evident that Gene is still struggling to suppress his attraction to men. The lengths in which Gene will go to conceal these feelings show how damaging machismo can be. Gene risked

The journey Gene undertakes in A Separate Peace is one of great struggle. Gene is constantly falling back into his adolescence by playing into his sexual feelings for Phineas. It is in this struggle where John Knowles is able to exemplify the obstacles Gene has gone through to reach society's idea of a man. A man who is so masculine that they lack any feeling of love or grief. John Knowles uses this extreme portrayal of machismo to make a social commentary on what it takes to be a man by society’s standards. Just like the subtle homophobia of society, A Separate Peace has the homoerotic relationship between Phineas and Gene develop through the use of symbolic objects and people. Evidently, the use of symbolism allowed John Knowles’ piece on social commentary to reach more eyes at the time in which it was