A Separate Peace Questions and Answers
by John Knowles

Recently Answered Questions

• A Separate Peace
  In a separate peace, find 3 quotations that support the following point (and explain each quotation): Lepellier suffers from mental trauma as a result of his time in the army and escapes before he can be issued with a “section 8 discharge."  ...
  Lepellier does suffer mental trauma in the army and does escape before his discharge. Below are three quotes that support that assertion. When Gene questions Lepellier on how long his furlough will...

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• A Separate Peace
  What did Leper do in  A Separate Peace that make him no longer fit to serve in the army? What were his behaviors and actions that led him to be discharged from the army with a Section 8 discharge?
  Leper is the last boy at Devon School that anyone would've thought might join the army. A quiet, peaceful, timid young lad, it's difficult to imagine anyone less cut out for the rigors of army...

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• A Separate Peace
  Who is a loner and social outcast in A Separate Peace?
  Leper Lepellier if often described by Gene as a loner and an outcast at Devon. For instance, when the other boys are playing a ball game Phineas has spontaneously invented, Leper is off by himself,...

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• A Separate Peace
  In chapter 11 of A Separate Peace, does Leper know the truth about what happened on the tree between Finny and Gene, making him an important character?
  By chapter 11 of A Separate Peace, Leper Lepellier has become a significant character because of his involvement with the war. Leper was the first of the group to enlist in the Army, but it was not...

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• A Separate Peace
  Use descriptive writing to describe the sights and sounds at Devon Winter Carnival in chapter 9 of A Separate Peace. Use your senses to find evidence and describe Gene's surroundings.
  As your prompt notes, description is not telling a story (which is narrative) but using imagery that employs the five senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. Smell does not come into the...

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• A Separate Peace
  In chapter 5 of A Separate Peace, what are reasons why Gene would not want to harm Finny, who is his best friend? Find quotations in this chapter to prove this and explain.
  Chapter 5 describes the aftermath of the accident in which Finny falls out of the tree after Gene jostles it. This chapter dispels Gene's paranoid idea, rising from Gene's own insecurity and sense...

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• A Separate Peace
  In chapter 5 of A Separate Peace, find evidence and quotations that prove that Gene wanted to be like Finny, and explain why.
  Gene is envious of the concern the masters at school have for Finny when Finny is laid up in the infirmary with his broken leg. He notes it was as though they felt it was especially unfair that it...

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• A Separate Peace
  In chapter 5 of A Separate Peace, explain why Gene would want to cause Finny harm. Focus on reasons why Gene is jealous and reasons why Gene wants to be Finny. Then, explain why Gene would not want to harm Finny. Focus on the facts that Finny is...
  Although Gene and Finny are friends, it is difficult for Gene to believe that the celebrated athlete is sincere in his affection. Gene, who is more intellectual and introverted, tends to overthink...

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• A Separate Peace
  What is the significance of the quote from A Separate Peace “He seemed older that morning, and leaning quietly against that great tree wrapped in his heavy coat, he seemed smaller too. Or perhaps it was only that I, inside the same body, had felt...
  The quoted sentences are related to the role reversals between Finny and Gene that occur after the injured Finny goes back to school. The lines are part of Gene’s first-person narrative, and he is...

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• A Separate Peace
  Explain how the writer suggests Finny’s thoughts and feelings in this passage from A Separate Peace: "Although he was rarely conscious of it, Phineas was always being watched, like the weather. Up the field, the others at badminton sensed a...
  In this passage from A Separate Peace, Finny is treating Gene as part of a collective self, the “us” which is standing below the other boys, but he is also extending that group membership to the...

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• A Separate Peace
  For A Separate Peace, explain how Knowles, the writer, uses language to convey meaning and to create effect in this paragraph:   "So I began running again. Leper Lepellier was loping along outside my perimeter, not noticing the game, tagging...
  This paragraph occurs in chapter three. It is early in the novel, while Gene is in summer school. Finny has organized a game with a heavy ball which he calls blitzball: as in a war zone, every...

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• A Separate Peace
  Explain how Knowles uses language in A Separate Peace to convey meaning and create effect, especially through the use of imagery.
  The first paragraph ends at "they began gradually to come down to us." What it intends to convey is the magnetism of Finny's personality. He is a natural leader who draws people to him. At this...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace, how would you describe Gene and Finny's relationship? Reflect on themes of friendship, human nature, and the realizations that Gene comes to in the story.
  The relationship between Gene and Finny changes and evolves, influenced by actions and consequences and filtered by changing perceptions. The changes are frequently by-products of Gene's insecurity...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace, Gene identifies closely with the war. What is one statement that shows this?
  Gene's memory of his time at Devon begins in the summer of 1942. This was the last time the boys were really free to be young. When classes resumed for the fall session, many aspects of Devon were...

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• A Separate Peace
  How does Knowles make the trial scene in chapter 11 a dramatic moment in the novel A Separate Peace?
  The trial scene is made dramatic first by the setting. Brinker whisks Gene and Finny out of their dorm room at 10:05 p.m. and takes them, mysteriously, to the darkened Assembly room in the First...

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• A Separate Peace
  What is the significance of the title A Separate Peace by John Knowles?
  There are a couple of ways in which the title of the novel is significant. One has to do with World War II and one has to do with Gene's relationship to Finny. The book is, of course, set during...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace, how does Gene's relationship with Finny bring the narrator to a fuller understanding of himself?
  Finny helps Gene understand that he is capable of envy, fear, bitterness, and even betrayal and harmful acts against another person. After the tree incident, Gene realizes how petty and...

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• A Separate Peace
  Why does Brinker insist on a trial about Finny's fall in A Separate Peace?
  Brinker Hadley is the antithesis of Phineas, law-abiding and conservative in his views. When Finny leaves school for a while, Brinker moves into the position of leadership, but more as an...

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• A Separate Peace
  What do we learn about Gene and his academic performance? What’s his goal for school?
  Gene likes to study and excels in academics. In fact, he is the top student in Devon School, and he is very proud—and jealous—of his standing. His goal is to preserve his spot at the top, no matter...

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• A Separate Peace
  How does Gene maintain control in the Butt Room?
  I assume that you are talking about the episode in Chapter 7 where Brinker brings Gene down to the Butt Room. Brinker has been teasing Gene, saying that Gene has killed Finny in order to have a big...

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• A Separate Peace
  What is the real meaning of the saying "a separate peace"?
  A "separate peace" refers to the peace that Gene must make within himself. It's not about a peace that's reached after a war, but the real struggle that is within the hearts of the characters. In...

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• A Separate Peace
  What are examples of social determinism and competition at Devon in A Separate Peace?
  The characters in A Separate Peace attend Devon boarding school, based on the highly elite Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. These young male characters are the sons of wealthy and...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace, what are the main themes? Please explain and give details.
  John Knowles explores many themes in his novel, A Separate Peace; three of the most predominant themes throughout the novel are warfare, identity, and jealousy. Search for Identity-- Gene...

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• A Separate Peace
  To what extent does Knowles make the reader sympathize with Gene when confronted by Brinker in the Butt room scene (chapter 7) in A Separate Peace?
  Since the story is told by Gene, we tend to sympathize with him. People are most often the heroes of their own stories. However, Knowles also uses ominous description and dialogue in this scene to...

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• A Separate Peace
  To what extent does Knowles make the reader sympathise with Gene While he is in the butt room?
  One of the ways in which Knowles makes the reader sympathize with Gene is by having him caught off guard by the accusations levied against him. Although Gene has thus far been unable to admit to...

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• A Separate Peace
  What are the themes revealed in chapter 4 of A Separate Peace?
  It is in chapter 4 that Gene realizes just how competitive he truly is with Finny. After one of their escapades, Gene fails the first test he has ever failed. He re-commits himself to his studies,...

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• A Separate Peace
  What is the significance of the wave of imagery Gene uses when he describes the war in A Separate Peace? With what note of foreshadowing does the wave passage end?
  The passage you're referring to reads as follows: So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as it bore on us, overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable, and...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace, what are some quotes that show Gene's conflict with himself?
  One quote that shows Gene's conflict with himself occurs in the first chapter as he returns to Devon after an interval of 15 years. He writes of remembering his conflicted emotions of both fear and...

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• A Separate Peace
  Is Gene redeemed in the end?
  At the end of John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace, Gene Forrester finds peace and redemption in the form of forgiveness from his friend Phineas. Mired in self-blame, jealousy, and regret, Gene...

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• A Separate Peace
  Is Gene responsible for Finny's death in John Knowles's A Separate Peace? Please explain why or why not.    
  In the final chapter of A Separate Peace, Gene admits to having killed Phineas as he reflects upon World War II: I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace, what relationships change, and how?
  The most important changed relationship in the novel is that between Gene, the novel's narrator, and his best friend, Phineas. As the novel opens, Gene is delighted to be chosen as the popular,...

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• A Separate Peace
  What role does Leper play in A Separate Peace? What does the author suggest about the nature of his relationship to Gene and Finny? Contrast Brinker and Finny. How do their personalities relate to the winter session and summer session respectively?
  Leper is a minor character whose role in the novel is to show the boys at Devon the harsh realities of war. No young man wanted to get out of serving his country in WWII, and Leper joins up on an...

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• A Separate Peace
  For A Separate Peace, discuss the book's title. Why do you think the author chose this? Create an alternative title and explain what makes this a possibility by providing examples from the story.
  The novel's title evokes several ideas about "peace" and the ways that it can separate or unite people. Because the book takes place during the World War II, the strong contrast of peace and war is...

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• A Separate Peace
  What is the significance of the closing scene in A Separate Peace by John Knowles?
  As Gene leaves the gym and walks across the fields for one last time as a new graduate of Devon School, the school is already being taken over by the military, the immediate future that is waiting...

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• A Separate Peace
  Analyze the role of competition in the relationship between Gene and Finny (not a summary of the role of competition in their relationship) in A Separate Peace.
  During the events leading up to Finny's accident in A Separate Peace, Gene's acute sense of competitiveness strains his relationship with his friend Finny. Gene feels that he consistently fails to...

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• A Separate Peace
  What are three things in this book that show leadership?
  This prompt is potentially quite wide in its scope. A relatively simple way the book shows leadership is through the adult characters. It could be parents specifying certain rules and expectations...

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• A Separate Peace
  Why, after fifteen years, does Gene return to school? What does this tell you about how the author will plot the story—that is, arrange its related events?
  Gene, the narrator, sets the scene of his return with a long opening descriptive passage about Devon and the town around it. He has come back on his own, because, he states: There were a couple of...

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• A Separate Peace
  To what extent does A Separate Peace reflect the turbulent life of the author?
  While not exactly an autobiographical book, A Separate Peace reflects John Knowles's high school years at the exclusive Philips Exeter Academy, a New England boarding school on which the novel's...

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• A Separate Peace
  What are some specific allusions in A Separate Peace?
  Because the novel is set during World War II and is intrinsically connected to the war, historical allusions play a major role in the book. Historical allusions: In Chapter 2, Finny discusses the...

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• A Separate Peace
  In John Knowles's A Separate Peace, why was Gene hiding his emotions from Phineas?
  Although Gene and Phineas are best friends, Gene hides his emotions because he doesn't trust the relationship due to its competitive nature. Gene is intimidated by Phineas because Finny is...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, why does Gene keep out of the way when Phil Latham wraps the blanket around Finny?
  Phil Latham wraps a blanket around Phineas because he has just tumbled down some stairs in the Assembly Hall corridor. The boys were putting on a mock trial about the day Phineas broke his leg...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace, why does Finny train Gene for the Olympics?
  Before his accident, Finny had been a multi-sport natural athlete of the highest degree. While his successes came easily to him and he didn't like to make a show of his abilities, he did enjoy...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace, why does Gene say that peace has returned to Devon?
  The novel begins at Devon during the Summer Session of 1942 when Gene and Finny, along with the other members of their class, live lives that have not, as yet, been caught up in World War II....

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• A Separate Peace
  Why does Gene, against his better judgement, jump from the tree? In your opinion, dose this show Gene to be strong or weak? Explain.
  Peer pressure. Everyone else is jumping, so Gene does too, much to Finny's encouraging and persuasion. Gene, at this point in the novel, is easily influenced, and in some respects is still "finding...

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• A Separate Peace
  Why does the bombing in central Europe seem unreal to Finny and the other boys? What does this reveal about him? Chapter 2
  Gene has an explanation for this in Chapter 2. He says, Bombs were completely unreal to us here, not because we couldn't imagine it - a thousand newspaper photographs and newsreels had given us a...

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• A Separate Peace
  Why is Devon described so carefully in the beginning of Knowles book A Separate Peace?
  Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel entitled You Can't Go Home Again in which he writes of his main character that he learned through hardship that you can't go home to someone who will ease your burden and...

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• A Separate Peace
  Where can you find symbolism emerge in Chapters 6 and 7 of the novel, A Separate Peace? i need one example from symbolism from both chapters a nd if you could help i will be extremely grateful!
  In Chapter Five of John Knowles's A Separate Peace, the Summer Session has ended, a session in which some rules were suspended and forgotten and the atmosphere was more relaxed. Now it is the...

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• A Separate Peace
  In A Separate Peace, when Gene realizes Finny is returning, about what does Gene change his mind?  
  As Gene and Brinker returned from working in the railyard, Brinker, completely disgusted with the oblivious attitude of Leper and the humor of shoveling snow while the war was raging, announced his...

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• A Separate Peace
  What is the significance of the war in the book, A Separate Peace?
  In John Knowles's A Separate Peace, the World War II setting parallels the personal and figurative war of Gene Forester. For, as Gene concludes at the end of the novel, ...it seemed clear that...

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• A Separate Peace
  What are two passages that support the theme of "A Separate Peace"?
  One theme of John Knowles's A Separate Peace is that of Guilt and Innocence. As Knowles himself wrote, after Finny's crippling accident, everything that follows is one long abject confession, a...

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