Beyond the basic need for a sense of control, people are driven by their sense of identity, of who they are. Each person lives in their own universes, which are centered upon their feeling of self-purpose. There are multiple types of identities such as individual and group identities. Each person's identity is formed differently because of the unique experiences every individual encounters. The formation can be affected by many things such as their home environment, social concurrences, and physiological health. 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 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. I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen. [...] We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives that were not bound up with destruction,". (Knowles 24) While the war rages on the boys of the school begin to adjust to their fates, showing their more negative emotions such as hatred for the enemy. Gene believed that everyone chose their enemy at some point, hated at some point. But what made Finny different was that he never did. Phineas in all his actions was good intentioned. He saw the world as a giant playground. The game he invented, Blitz Ball, is a game where no one actually wins or loses. Blitz Ball's whole idea is enjoying the pure fun of the game and not the outcome which shows who Finny really is as a person. He sees the goodness in everyone and expects that everyone else does the same. (Which can also cause him to look arrogant and selfish at times which Finny never becomes fully aware of.) This blind eye to evil leads to Finny's downfall (literally) as he doesn't realize the burdens Gene holds While Finny was known for the amazing feat of keeping his kindhearted nature throughout the story even during the stressful times of the war, which most could not do. But Leper did not. Elwin was a mild and quiet loner of a young boy, who loved snails and mystical things of nature. He was also the poster child for the carefree boys who had not yet been affected by the impending war. He was a comfort to Gene of things that would never change. Gene avoided going to Leper's old room (Brinker's new room) for the reasoning that he didn't want to see the gypsy summer truly come to an end. Leper's character development began to ascend in its climax when Leper became the first to enroll in the army. Him doing so reminded every one of their similar fate and if they would enroll as well. Also, the fact that Leper "escaped" from the military due to mental instability didn't help either. When Gene meet Leper at his home in Vermont there was a clear personality change as "He shrugged, a look of disgust with my question crossing his face. The careful politeness he had always had was gone,". (Knowles 144) Instead of kind and mild he is now aggressive and has continuing mood swings. Elwin is a completely different person and when he begins to explain his gruesome hallucinations of brooms turning into human legs and men turning into women, Gene realizes the toll the war has taken on
feels that he has to get revenge. This anger leads to Gene jouncing Finny out of the tree.
Leper kept to himself most of time and barely talked to anyone. He didn’t fit in at Devon, so he spent his time outdoors exploring nature. Leper did not like to participate in group activities. He lives in world away from violence and war. Leper found happiness in cross-country skiing. He doesn’t change much in the beginning of the book, he has a passive personality and just goes with the flow.
The American Library Association defines a challenge to a book as, “an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based on the objections of a person or group” (“About Banned). A Separate Peace by John Knowles was one of the many challenged books of its time; it was ranked sixty-seventh on the American Literature Association’s list of most challenged classic novels The book continues to be challenged all over the country and in 2013 it is ranked thirty-fifth on the summer of banned books list .(ALA). A Separate Peace chronicles the life of a boy named Gene Forrester, a student of the prestigious Devon School in New Hampshire. In Gene’s first year at Devon. He becomes close friends with his daredevil of a roommate Finny. Secretly Gene somewhat
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
Phineas - Called Finny by his classmates, Phineas is Gene's closest companion at Devon and, for
The quote, “Ignorance is bliss,” by Thomas Gray is a seemingly adequate description of the lives of Gene, Finny, and Leper until they are all roughly jolted out of their fantasy world and brought back to reality. In A Separate Peace, John Knowles does an acceptable job of showing how disillusionment can greatly impact and, thus, change the lives of people. The book showcases the cycle of disillusionment and the ramifications it implies. Throughout the book, we see Gene, Leper, and Finny’s views on the world change. This all culminates in Gene being elevated to a higher level of understanding of the world and seeing the truth about Devon and the war. The illusions created by Finny and Leper are also taken on by Gene, and he, in turn, shares in their disillusionment. Overall, disillusionment is a part of life and often serves as a tool to help many people grow and learn from the past.
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.
Gene symbolizes inner war, while Finny symbolizes a sense of peace. Gene is the jealous one in the friendship, and he is also the one to immediately jump to conclusions. Finny is a little stubborn and manipulative, but he tries his hardest to be a good person. An example to prove this statement is when Gene suddenly assumed that Finny was trying to sabotage his achievements during school. When Gene reacted to this by being jealous of Finny, it showed that he was the type to make assumptions off of little factual evidence. Gene’s jealousy and hatred towards Finny resulted in him purposefully inflicting harm on Finny. Finny is the type of boy to try and talk himself out of anything, making him very manipulative and liked around Devon. The book causes the reader to believe that Finny was liked by most of his classmates and his teachers, this giving him an advantage when he tried to get out of trouble. The book gives us many examples of this. One being when Finny was late because of jumping off of the limb, and another when he talked himself out of trouble for wearing a pink shirt and a tie as a belt.
When observing Leper’s behavior, Gene saw that Leper was “psycho” and “it was the army which had done it to him” (144). Leper is so afraid of what he is going to experience in the Army that he goes crazy. Leper simply does not have the mental toughness to endure the responsibilities brought on by the Military. Due to Leper’s inability to serve, he is bound to receive a “Section Eight discharge” which is a “dishonorable discharge only worse” (144). As leper grapples with the war waged inside of him, he struggles to see right from wrong. In order to escape possible discharge and a life of dishonor, Leper manages to run away from the Army before it can get to him. Back at Devon, there is rumors and jokes being spread about how Leper became “nervous in the service”(148). When Leper returns to Devon, everything is different which does not help him adjust back to his usual routine. While his sense of reason is perverted by the effects of his mental state, Leper can still see the truth behind Finny’s accident. By the end of the novel, Leper is still struggling with his mental state of
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.
After Phineas, also known as Finny, falls from the tree, he slowy begins to change. He begins to lose his innocence, It can be seen in the beginning of the novel that Finny acts very innocent. For example, Finny's game of Blitzball shows his spontaneous style of play, and his innocent child like personality. However after Finny's tragic fall from the tree, he begins to seem less innocent and childish. He begins to reveal secrets to Gene, such as when he tells Gene about trying to enlist in the war. “I've been writing to the Army and the Navy and the Marines and the Canadians and everybody else all winter..”(Knowles 190). War is not an event for innocent little boys. When readers find out that Finny had been trying to enlist in the war all winter it shows that after the fall Finny becomes less and less innocent. He no longer begins to play his childish games, and no longer tries to preform his crazy stunts. Though he is hurt, he does not seem to want to watch or help participate in any of these activies. On the day Finny fell from that tree, he did not just plument down into the river beneath him, but also fell from innocence.
Summer was already ending and Gene gives one last description by saying, “From behind us the last long rays of light played across the campus, accenting every slight undulation of the land, emphasizing the separateness of each bush” (59). The simpleness of summer is about to abruptly end. Yet, summer and childhood must come to an end as some point. For Gene, it all ends when Phineas falls as described on page 60, “Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around 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.” All playfulness is lost when Finny’s body connects with the dirt beneath him; what follows is the cold onslaught of the winter session or adulthood. Gene, in order to make this transition must cope with the intense, disatisfying feelings of guilt for he was the one who set his friend off balance. Finny, the core of carefree behavior and summer, was put out, emphasizing the end of the session. As the winter session starts up the teachers were unhappy that Phineas was
Have you ever had negative thoughts or feelings towards a friend? Envy is a natural condition and likely has evolutionary roots. John Knowles’ book, A Separate Peace, focuses on the complicated friendship between two teenage boys, and the resulting loss of innocence of the protagonist, Gene Forrester. Gene struggles with inner wars such as jealousy, inferiority, and guilt towards his best friend, Phineas.
The novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, is the coming of age story of Gene Forrester. This novel is a flashback to the year 1943, when Gene is attending Devon School during his senior year and the summer before it. "Gene's youth and inexperience make him ill-equipped to deal with situations that require maturity" (Overview: A Separate Peace 2). However, Gene is a follower of Finny and therefore gains experiences that provoke his development into adulthood. Some of these experiences include: breaking Finny's leg, training for the 1944 Olympics, and killing Finny. Through these three experiences Gene is forced to grow out of his childish-self and become a man.
In life, as well in books there can be a lot of friendship going on; in some cases there can be bad friendships and there can be good friendships. In A Separate Peace Gene, in my opinion, Gene is not a good friend. In Catcher in the Rye Holden, in my opinion, is also not a good friend. I think that Holden and Gene are not good friends to other people and do not really know how to keep a friendship, because even though they both have friends, they both still discern their friends in bad ways or think bad things about them; because the person or friend has done something bad towards them or because they feel insecure towards the person or the situation that they are in.