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A Separate Peace
Throughout the novel, the boys attending Devon School prepare to enter World War II following graduation. Despite the constant news covering the war and enthusiasm surrounding America's...
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A Separate Peace
In the beginning of chapter 10, Gene pauses in the story to discuss his own experience as a soldier in the war. His experience wasn't anything dramatic or horrific, so a brief explanation will...
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A Separate Peace
Gene does not exactly hit Leper; he "shove(s) (his) foot against the rung of his chair and kick(s)," sending Leper onto the floor. He does this when Leper, who is bitter and unflinchingly honest,...
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A Separate Peace
A desire for certainty is one of Brinker's most prominent traits. He craves clarity. This is why Brinker insists on investigating the incident on the tree and why he is so eager to enlist in the...
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A Separate Peace
Gene doesn't ever fight anyone exactly as we think of fighting. He does: push Finny out of a tree sneakily which puts the story in motion participate in the game of blitzball which pits every...
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A Separate Peace
A Separate Peace is a frame narrative through the eyes of the main character, Gene Forrester. The novel tells about his time in boarding school fifteen years earlier, through themes of friendships,...
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A Separate Peace
The narrator of A Separate Peace by John Knowles is Gene Forrester, and he tells the story from the perspective of time. In chapter one of the novel, he returns to the place where his life changed...
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A Separate Peace
The Suicide Society was a club of Finny's invention, and was subject completely and totally to his spontaneous whims. It met every night, and initiation was jumping from the tree. The boys met,...
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A Separate Peace
Gene and Finny are in many ways opposites. Gene is an intellectual who excels academically, Finny is an accomplished athlete with mediocre grades. Gene is self-conscious and reserved, Finny is very...
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A Separate Peace
When Finny invents blitzball, he makes up the rules as he goes along, even as the game is furiously underway. This leads to confusion among the other boys. At one point, Finny tells Gene to tackle...
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A Separate Peace
If you consider Finny the tragic hero of the novel, here are the tragic elements regarding his characterization. 1. A once noble hero experiences a downfall: Finny was once the most popular,...
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A Separate Peace
A Separate Peace has a dark tone throughout the novel because of the back and forth feelings that Gene has about Finny. It's a good vs. evil theme which transpires through the carefree innocence...
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A Separate Peace
Several themes can be drawn out of the novel, but the most evident one would read something like "Sometimes one's greatest enemy is oneself." This is obviously the case with Gene, an...
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A Separate Peace
You are going to be able to find a lot of these quotes in the opening chapters of the book. For example, look a few pages into chapter 2. Gene says of Finny wearing the pink shirt, "I couldn't...
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A Separate Peace
Two scenes that nicely parallel are the two injuries that Finny sustains. The first injury is Finny's fall from the tree. In this incident Gene clearly jostled the limb causing Finny's fall. The...
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A Separate Peace
The narrator of the story, Gene, has internal and external obstacles to overcome, and I will give you one example of each. Gene is an introspective kind of person, perhaps what we may call a...
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A Separate Peace
In chapter 1, Gene notes that Finny always traveled in groups, particularly large ones. This likely implies his popularity, especially coming from Gene's persepective. In the end of chapter 1,...
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A Separate Peace
There's one particular scene between Brinker and Gene that's especially significant, and that's the one that takes place in the butt room. This is a place in the cellar where the boys secretly go...
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A Separate Peace
Leper is interested in bugs, nature, and not necessarily being involved in Blitzball, except on the sidelines. He's a typical weakling or even a nerd. He seems to be anything but army-ready. Leper...
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A Separate Peace
This concept of rebirth, which is alluded to through a reference to Lazarus at the beginning of chapter four, symbolically mirrors Gene's transformation of feeling for Finny. Before this point, he...
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A Separate Peace
Although there is no specific reason why Finny's name is significant, we do know that it's short for Phineas, and we're also never given his last name. It seems that John Knowles' objective in only...
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A Separate Peace
You have asked two questions so I will only respond to the first. You always need to be wary of reading any novel as an allegory. A simple allegorical reading can lead you to miss some of the depth...
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A Separate Peace
" Phineas didn't really dislike West Point, in particular, or authoriy in general, but just considered authority the necessary evil against which happiness was achieved by reaction, the...
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A Separate Peace
Mood is the emotional atmosphere or quality within the story. Since A Separate Peace is a longer text, the mood shifts as the story develops. Much of the emotional quality of the story depends...
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A Separate Peace
In Chapter 3 of A Separate Peace, Finny persuades Gene to jump from the tree; when Gene loses his balance, Finny's hand quickly shoots out and he grabs Gene's arm, saving him from falling. Later,...
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A Separate Peace
At first, Finny is in denial of the war's very existence. He comes up with a bizarre conspiracy theory: the so-called war's just a gigantic ruse by a bunch of "fat old men" to keep the kids from...
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A Separate Peace
These answers can be found on the last two pages of chapter 11, if you are interested in finding the actual quotes. Leper actually describes the event very poetically, when he is assembled before...
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A Separate Peace
Brinker, always the self-righteous leader when there's a way to make himself more important in the eyes of his classmates, organizes the gathering at the First Building to determine the true and...
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A Separate Peace
Finny comes to get Gene for a meeting of the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session. Finny tells Gene that Leper (Elwin Lepellier) is attempting to qualify by jumping from the tree. Still...
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A Separate Peace
Finny's vision of peace is similar to what most idealistic young people consider to be peace--he thinks that everyone can get along, especially if athletics or sports are involved. After Finny...
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A Separate Peace
In Chapter 8, Finny tells Gene that the "war stuff" is a myth. He states that American is not truly "in a state of war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan." He claims, "there isn't any war." So,...
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A Separate Peace
Many of the boys at Devon School had threatened to enlist that winter, "but only Leper was serious". A few weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday, Leper chose to join the ski troops rather...
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A Separate Peace
Adversity is defined as one or more unfortunate events, and in A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene faces a few of them. Since the novel is a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age story, Gene must...
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A Separate Peace
Before Finny tells Gene that he's his "best pal" (48), all we get from Gene is information about his jealousy of Finny that puts both of them in a negative light. Since Gene is telling the story,...
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A Separate Peace
The war's effect on Devon is similar to its effect on the boys. When Gene returns to Devon after his break and after visiting Finny, he observes that some of the younger professors are gone--called...
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A Separate Peace
A Separate Peace is the freedom or the liberation as to which your question referred of being a teenager. These are your years of not being bound by the war of life. While in the 40s, being 18 or...
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A Separate Peace
In chapter ten of A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene is going to visit his former classmate Elwin "Leper" Lepellier at Leper's home after receiving a note that Leper has gone AWOL (absent...
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A Separate Peace
Near the end of A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene Forrester first learns of Finny's death from Dr. Stanpole, who at the moment is "incomprehensible" (185). Reeling from the shock of his...
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A Separate Peace
The quote ”I was Phineas“ referred to Gene's longing to have the athletic ability and temperament of his friend Finny.”Only Phineas never was afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone." So...
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A Separate Peace
Rivalry is between two distinct parties. Competition is between any parties. In A Separate Peace Gene pits himself in particular as a rival of Finny. He wants to have something that he is better...
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A Separate Peace
I'm assuming you are referring to Gene's bouncing of the branch of the tree which causes Finny to fall. Gene displays his feelings of guilt in various ways. He dresses in Finny's clothing one...
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A Separate Peace
The war first makes its incursion into the atmosphere at Devon in small ways, "beginning almost humorously with announcements about maids and days spent at apple picking" (Ch.7). The...
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A Separate Peace
In order to relive and evaluate his experiences of the summer of 1942, Gene Forrester returns as an adult to Devon School. As he travels back in memory, he comes to realize that Phineas was truly...
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A Separate Peace
I do not know all that much about private boys' schools in that time and place, but I am wondering whether the school followed a British system that had boys starting much younger than ninth grade....
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A Separate Peace
From a literary perspective, the conclusion of the novel is satisfying in that it is consistent with the nature of the characters as they have been developed throughout the story. Also, the...
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A Separate Peace
"This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation...
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A Separate Peace
The differences between Leper and Brinker are more obvious, but studying their characters reveals several very important similarities. Both boys are afraid of going to World War II, and they...
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A Separate Peace
Every reader might interpret the meaning of friendship in A Separate Peace differently based on personal experiences; however, one thing is for sure, and it might be trite, but nothing really is as...
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A Separate Peace
Two of the symbols that emerge in Chapter 3 are sports and blitzball. Sports are a metaphor for the war. Finny, who is a great afficionado of games of athletic skill, has a most unrealistic view on...
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A Separate Peace
Gene actually does mention Finny to the reader after his death, if not to anyone else in the novel. However, Gene does mention in the novel that he doesn't ever cry for Finny, and that he doesn't...
