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A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace is John Knowles' first published novel, released in 1959. The coming-of-age novel is Knowles' most widely-known work.

Plot summary

The story begins with Gene Forrester returning to his old prep school, Devon, fifteen years after he graduated. He returns to visit two places he regards as "fearful sites," a flight of marble stairs, and a tree by a river. He examines the stairs and notices that the stairs are made of very hard marble. He then trudges through the mud to the old, gnarled tree by the river and, to his relief, is smaller and less intimidating than before. Gene then has a flashback, remembering his schoolboy years when he was sixteen years old, a student at Devon.

Despite their polar personalities, Gene and Phineas make fast friends at Devon: Gene's quiet, introverted intellectual personality matches Finny's more extroverted, carefree, athletic demeanor.

One of Finny's ideas during Gene's "Sarcastic Summer" of 1942 is to create a "Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session," with Gene and himself as charter members. He also creates a game called "Blitz Ball" (from the German blitzkrieg, appropriate as the story is written in a World War II setting). Finny creates a rite of induction by having members jump into the Devon River from a large, high tree.

As the summer progresses, Gene becomes resentful of Finny's natural gift at athletics and of Finny's constant and distracting presence, which causes him to fail a trigonometry test. Gene convinces himself that Finny, who is the best at athletics, doesn't want Gene to be able to rival him in academics and is deliberately trying to destroy Gene's academic career. That night, Finny decides that he and Gene should jump together. While on the limb, with Finny about to jump, Gene bounces the limb. There is no elaboration; his actions are bluntly stated and regretted soon after they are committed. As a result of Gene's act of jealousy, Finny loses his balance, falls out of the tree, and breaks his leg. It is too late for Gene to realize that he "was not of the same quality" as Finny; that Gene is suspicious and tends to see ulterior motives where there are none. Gene contemplates his action while Finny slowly recovers.

The only time he shows any anger towards Gene is when Gene tries to confess to knocking Finny off the tree. Finny refuses to believe it, more wounded by that attempted confession in some ways than he was by the act itself. Upon his return, Finny begins to create a fantasy world of sorts around him to avoid facing the war, whose existence he emphatically denies: "Don't be a sap. There is no war." Finny is "the essence of this careless peace." (It is later revealed that Finny always believed that there was a war on, and that he denied its existence because he would never be able to fight in it.) Because his leg injury prevents him from engaging in sports activity, Finny encourages Gene to build up his own physical strength and athletic prowess. He even trains Gene for the possible 1944 Winter Olympics, which ended up being cancelled due to the war.

The action comes to a head when a group of students, led by Brinker Hadley, who suspects something darker in Gene, drags him and Finny into an empty classroom and puts them on a mock trial to "clear up any stray rumors." They try to force the two to confront the truth of Gene's guilt. Leper Lepellier (once soft and quiet, now mentally imbalanced from his experiences in the army) is called in, and he recalls the jump as he saw it, saying the two boys moved "like an engine," as in one went up and one went down. Finny, realizing Gene's betrayal, runs from the room and falls down a nearby flight of stairs, cleanly breaking his injured leg a second time.

After Finny is taken to the infirmary, Gene tries to go and see him, but he is furious with Gene and will not see him. Gene walks around the campus that night as if he were a ghost. The next morning, Gene sees Finny and they reconcile their differences: Gene admits that he made Finny fall, but only because it came from some impulse he could not control. Finny accepts this with relief and forgives him, but Gene is still unsure of his excuse. Gene leaves Finny so that he can go into surgery to set the bone. Afterwards, Gene meets up with Dr. Stanpole, who tells Gene that Finny has died. Dr. Stanpole thinks that, during the operation, some bone marrow from Finny's leg entered his blood stream and got into his heart, killing him. Gene takes the news as a shock, but never cries over Finny, believing that Finny's death was, in essence, his own death.

Gene reflects that Finny's death was a result of Gene's hatred and jealousy towards him. He explains that there is a point in everyone's life when they realize that there is evil in the world and that they must fight their inner demons to control themselves. It is at that time when one's innocence is lost forever. Only Finny was innocent, and although this made him unique, Gene believes it eventually led to Finny's demise.

Characters

Gene Forrester

The narrator and protagonist of the novel. He is a thoughtful and intelligent person, so it seems. He soon develops a love hate relationship with his best friend, Finny, whom he both adores and envies. He is also the complete opposite from his friend Finny. He isn't all that athletic and he is known to take life very seriously.

Phineas "Finny"

Phineas is the one character in the book that John Knowles does not provide a last name for. He is a charismatic student leader that can get away with anything at Devon. He loves to take risks and becomes best friends with Gene Forrester (Protagonist). Phineas creates the game "Blitzball" while at Devon. He is also an amazing athlete. At one point he realizes that a record had not been broken for four years. He decides to break it and completely astonishes Gene when he breaks the school swimming record. During the course of the book, his athletic career is destroyed when Gene knocks him off a tree and injures him which eventually leads to his death.

Elwin "Leper" Lepellier

Leper is the isolationist of the novel who was often ridiculed by fellow classmates. He was present when Finny "fell" from the tree. Eventually Leper, surprising his classmates, enlists in the army and then deserts during a mental breakdown (and also to avoid a Section 8 discharge), and returns home to Vermont. He then returns to school to hide as he is suffering from insanity brought on by his breakdown in the military. He is present when Finny slips down the marble staircase and breaks his leg again. His name is symbolic of his personality. Sufferers of leprosy are called "lepers" and are isolated from society. Similarly, Leper is an isolated person, avoiding social interaction whenever possible. After deserting, Leper suffers from the same hallucinations that had brought his mental breakdown to the surface while still in the army. The hallucinations mostly concern transformations: men into women, chair arms into human arms. This illustrates both the turmoil which the war causes in the boys, and the transformation that they face in the Army and the war.

Allusions and references from other works

In Paul Russell's novel The Coming Storm, A Separate Peace is used as a text in English class.
In The Simpsons, the episode "Mother Simpson" features a discussion between Lisa and Grandma Simpson about the book.
In Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie reads A Separate Peace for his English teacher.
In Alexander Payne's film Sideways one of Miles' students reads the last paragraph of A Separate Peace aloud to his English class towards the end of the film.