I am currently in the 11th grade at White Oak High School. Math and Science UIL has been great for me during my high school career. I participate in Number Sense and Science events. I also love playing on the WOHS golf team. I plan on following my brother’s footsteps and attend college at the University of Texas in Austin. The Texas Longhorns are my true passion, and once I move to Austin for college, I plan to live in Austin for the rest of my life. I particularly love the uniqueness of the city, and I am very hopeful that I find a spot for my dream job, becoming a radiologist, in Austin.

In the plot of John Knowles novel A Separate Peace, Gene and Finny, the two main characters, interact with each other and the other students at Devon school. One main event that started the summer session at Devon was a game that Finny personally made up, called Blitzball. This game involved whatever rules Finny made up on the spot. This is what he usually did at the school, make up his own rules to a game that nobody had ever played before. The next main event happened at the the tree that Gene remembered when he went back to the school at the beginning of the book. This is where Gene jounces the limb to make Finny fall off of the limb and shatter his entire leg. Finny falling off the limb foreshadows Leper falling off mentally. The next main event in the story is Finny finding out that Leper had gone insane while in the war, making him realize that the war was as real as anything else. This change in Finny’s attitude destroys any sense of hope that he had left. Leper caused Finny to re-break his leg, making him have surgery to fix the bone in his leg. Of course, the surgery went bad and Finny died of bone marrow going into his heart.

Trust

Gene is easily the pick for the character with trust issues, considering that he always seems to betray his loved ones. He becomes paranoid of Finny’s excellent athletic ability, making him vulnerable to hatred towards his “best friend.” As expected, Gene betrays Finny by jiggling the branch that he was standing on, allowing him to fall and shatter his leg. Gene begins his doubts about Finny when he believes that Finny is trying to ruin his chances of being the top rated student in his class.

Guilt

Again, Gene is the focus point of this truth about human nature. Once Dr. Stanpole gave Gene the details on Finny’s leg, a dangerous amount of guilt rushed through his body. He feels this guilt because he personally ruined Finny’s life, shutting off the only thing that he could actually excel at, athletics.

Realization

Finny is the main focus of this truth about human nature because of his realization towards the war. The war is a hard fact to face for Finny. This is made difficult by the fact that Devon school was completely isolated from the war, none of the students having physically been in the real thing, except for Leper. Leper was the main reason Finny finally believed there really was a war going on, pointing out that Leper’s mental and physical attitude changed entirely.

Hate/Love

In John Knowles novel A Separate Peace the two main characters, Gene and Finny, let out a lot of emotion throughout the story, both healthy and non-healthy emotions. At the beginning of the novel, both Gene and Finny have a sense of enjoyment when they are around each other, with each of their mental statuses thriving. They are at the peak of their relationship as the Summer term of Devon comes to a close. Gene and Finny began to feel the love of each other that long-time best friends usually establish. But one event can change a relationship forever, and that one event was the tree “accident” where Gene intentionally made Finny fall, shattering his leg on impact. All of a sudden, a certain opposite feeling arose in their friendship. The terrible feeling of hatred crept in on Gene and Finny, allowing Finny to believe (even though he didn’t want to admit it) that Gene felt hatred against him as he shook the tree branch. This emotion had never really entered the two boys’ lives, which allowed Finny to formulate an opinion that Gene disapproved of their friendship, leading him straight into a death that was very unexpected and unfortunate.

These are 10 of my favorite quotes from A Separate Peace.

1. “I threw my hip against his, catching him by surprise, and he was instantly down, definitely pleased. This was why he liked me so much.”

This quote reveals how Gene makes his relationship with Finny thrive, involving playful nature.

2. “We seemed to be nothing but children playing against heroic men.”

This quote shows that the guilt and resentment that Gene faces are far from what a normal teenager would face.

3. “He needed me. I was the least trustworthy person he had ever met.”

This quote shows how Gene forgot about enlisting to stay at Devon with Finny.

4. “It was his wildest demonstration of himself, of himself in the kind of world he loved; it was his choreography of peace.”

This quote portrays how Gene places himself and Finny into a peaceful amity.

5. “I’m sure that he looked down at his leg every morning first thing, as soon as he remembered it, to see if it had not been totally restored while he slept.”

This quote reveals that Gene wonders how Finny is living with his shattered leg.

6. “Just as I knew the field could never grow again, I knew that Leper could not be wild or bitter or psycho tramping across the hills of Vermont.”

This quote shows how Gene kept on trying to believe that Leper was completely sane, although this was never possible.

7. “To keep silent about this amazing happening deepened this shock for me. It made Finny seem too unusual for—not friendship, but too unusual for rivalry.”

This quote portrays Gene’s desire to become a part of Finny.

8. “His eyes were furious now too, glaring blindly at me. “What do you know about it, anyway?” None of this could have been said by the Leper of the beaver dam.”

This quote shows Leper’s reaction to Gene trying to strip him of his identity.

9. “My aid alone had never seemed to him in the category of help. The reason for this occurred to me as the procession moved slowly across the brilliant foyer to the doors; Phineas had thought of me as an extension of himself.”

This quote reveals how Finny is wanting Gene to be a part of him.

10. “I was beginning to see that Phineas could get away with anything. I couldn’t help envying him that a little, which was perfectly normal. There was no harm in envying even your best friend a little.”

This quote shows how Gene is extremely jealous of Finny for his ability to squirm out of any trouble.

 

In John Knowles novel A Separate Peace the two main characters, Gene and Finny, go through multiple changes, physically and mentally. One of Gene’s changes involves his relationship to Finny after his accident. It seemed like Gene was scared to talk to Finny because of the amount of guilt he felt towards ruining Finny’s athletic ability forever. Even though Gene’s mind is scarred from the horrible incident, Finny’s body is scarred from his fall. His leg completely shattered, immediately turning him from an athletic phenomenon into a handicap with a wheelchair. This leaves Finny helpless in society considering that he doesn’t try in academics. The only thing Finny actually was able to excel in was anything sports related.

Another major change that happened during the novel was Finny’s point of view on the war. At the beginning of the book, he believed that the war was made up by a bunch of fat men. But when Gene let Finny know how the war affected Leper, he almost immediately forgot about the fat men and began to face reality for the first time. This reality affected Finny so much that it led straight to his death. With Finny’s death, Gene faces the truth that the war is more dangerous than he ever thought in the the peacefulness of the school.

“A Separate Peace” by John Knowles holds a special meaning behind the title of the novel. With the story being set in World War 2, peace would be a hard thing to find in that era of time. The only thoughts people had in their minds were if they were going to live through the next day or if they were going to be leaving for the war. If you were a female, your husband or possibly one of your sons could leave for the war and never come back. The only word that crossed peoples’ minds during the war was violence, considering that that was the only way the war could be won anyway. But in the novel, violence rarely appear in the text. The students at Devon, including Gene and Finny, have found a separate peace from the war. They have isolated themselves from the violence of the war into a certain peaceful setting at the military school. Some of the students have been so used to the peacefulness that they have began to question if the war was even real. Gene and Finny face the violence of the war like teenagers at a high school face drama, they stray away from it.

In John Knowles novel, A Separate Peace, two teenagers live in a military school called Devon where the main point of being there is to get ready for the war. Gene and Finny endure many conflicts in the duration of the novel, but the one that stands out the most is the double jump off of the tree that ended with a thud. Finny lost his balance on top of the tree and fell off, all because of Gene’s stupidity to jounce the limb in order to make him fall. After the main incident of the story, all of the characters seem to stray away from dangerous acts and move into more of an interrogating stage. When this happens, Brinker Hadley ushers Finny into the Assembly Hall of the school to interrogate him on the tree “accident.” As a result, Finny gets irritated and trips down the marble, re-breaking his leg like an idiot. This second fall ends up in his death. Overall, I didn’t really enjoy reading the novel. If the book would have been from Finny’s perspective, I think it would have been more energetic and much more funner to read. The novel was well written, but it didn’t have the exact amount of violence that would keep me hooked.