A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace

Author	John Knowles
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Macmillan (USA)
Publication date	1959
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	0-553-28041-4

A Separate Peace (1959) is an award-winning novel written by John Knowles set in the fictional Devon School in New Hampshire during World War II. The book explores the human condition, hate, vengeance, and guilt. In 1972, it was adapted into a movie starring Parker Stevenson and John Heyl.

Plot summary

The novel begins with the adult Gene Forrester returning to Devon, an exclusive New Hampshire prep school, which Gene had attended in his youth. The sights of Devon, and in particular a large tree and a marble staircase, evoke memories and emotions within Gene. The book then travels back to Gene's past, immediately introducing a number of characters, including Phineas. Despite their polar personalities, Gene and Phineas ("Finny") made 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," (the name being derived from the term 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. One night, Finny decides that he and Gene should jump together. While on the limb, with Finny about to jump, Gene jostles 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 from the tree, and severely 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, while Finny is pure joy and untroubled innocence. Gene contemplates his action while Finny slowly recovers.

Finny maintains his characteristically upbeat attitude throughout his convalescence. The only time he shows any anger towards Gene is when Gene first 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." 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 another student, Brinker Hadley, drags Gene and Finny into an assembly room and puts them on trial to determine Finny's "casualty." They try to force the two to confront the truth of how and why Finny broke his leg. Gene tries to deny everything, knowing that the truth will destroy Finny. Leper Lepellier (once soft and quiet, now mentally imbalanced from his experience in the war) 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 flees the room in anguish and falls down a nearby flight of stairs, cleanly breaking his already injured leg. Gene tries to go to the infirmary and see Finny, but Finny is furious with him 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 blind impulse he could not control. Finny accepts this quite easily and forgives him, but Gene is still unsure of his excuse and is not sure if he purposely caused Finny's fall. Gene leaves and recalls every moment of that day, waiting for Finny to come out of surgery to set the bone, and meets the doctor afterwards. The doctor informs Gene that during the operation some bone marrow from Finny's leg went through his blood stream and to his heart, killing him. Gene takes the news as a shock, but never cries about Finny; Gene believes that when Finny died, a piece of himself died too, the part of him that was strict and regimented and anti-Finny, and that one does not cry for one's 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 Phineas was innocent, and although this made him unique, Gene believes it eventually led to his demise.

Major characters

Gene Forrester

Gene is the narrator of the novel and appears at two different time periods: as a man in his thirties re-visiting Devon fifteen years after being a student there, and, for most of the novel, as a sixteen and seventeen-year-old student during World War II. The novel is written in the past tense, and we assume that Gene's narration is triggered by his re-visitation of his old school when he is thirty-two. And although the older narrator seems long past the emotional turmoil that marked his schoolboy days, the events of his years at Devon are told as if they were occurring in the present, as if our narrator were still sixteen years old. The Gene that we encounter for the bulk of the novel is, like many of his classmates, at a liminal stage in his life-the time between boyhood and manhood. This transition is further emphasized by the war, Gene being in the final years of freedom before he can be legally claimed by the world war in progress. Outwardly Gene is one of the top students in his class and a talented athlete. These traits earn him respect on campus and, most importantly, the friendship of Phineas, whom Gene respects more than any of his fellow classmates. But inwardly, Gene is plagued by the darker forces of human nature, forces which prey upon the turbulence of adolescence. Gene's admiration and love for Finny is counter-balanced and marred by his fierce jealousy of him, by a deep insecurity in himself, and, because of his insecurity, a need to compete with and "defeat" his friend at all costs. Gene's internal emotional battles are the major source of conflict and tension in the novel.

Phineas (Finny)

Finny is Gene's best friend. He is nonconformist, self-confident, honest, disarming, possessed of a magnetic personality, and the best athlete in the school. He also has a talent for talking his way out of any problem, not by deceit, but rather by his infectious good nature, so much so that teachers simply cannot remain angry with him. In other words, he seems perfect in almost every way. His failing is that he does not realize that he is unique, that he cannot see the flaws in other people: their jealousy, their hatred. His "good natured spirit" is shown in the various games which he creates, in which there are no winners or losers, but just players. Gene says that "Finny was too unusual for competition," and in the same vein, he does not need a last name. This is significant because it makes him more of a symbol- he is too extraordinary for a last name. At the end of the book, Finny dies when bone marrow enters his bloodstream and stops his heart.

Brinker Hadley

Brinker is an elitist student leader. He is, in some ways, a foil to Finny's character. He is also a charismatic student leader, but his devotion is to order and rules, while Finny's is to spontaneity and anarchic fun. While Finny embodied the spirit of the "summer session," Brinker is the king of the winter session, with its return of discipline and constant reminders of approaching war. A noted "joker," he is the first to accuse Gene of causing Phineas's accident. Later in the novel, Brinker organizes a "trial" with his cronies to "uncover the facts" behind Finny's accident. Brinker's name is symbolic, as he tends to push people "to the brink"; this is demonstrated many times in the book, most obviously during the trial.

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 hallucinations, mostly concerning 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: they must turn from boys into soldiers.

Major themes

Various themes run throughout the work, one of the foremost being the manner in which people perceive threats to themselves when such threats do not exist. For example, Gene feels that Finny willfully tries to sabotage his academic pursuits with the games he invents. Such perceived threats create a one-sided jealousy between the two friends, perhaps motivating Gene to "jounce the limb" of the tree out of envy or a need for revenge. Three themes for this book are the pain of war, coming of age, and the dangers of jealousy.

The novel also touches on themes of innocence and its loss. It is, perhaps, significant that the flashpoint of the work occurs in a tree, and that said flashpoint is a fall, with (given the context of the novel) a deep reference to Christian allegory, the Tree of Knowledge, Original Sin, and man's Fall from Grace. The story may also be a metaphor for the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, Gene representing Cain and Finny Abel. The Devon School symbolizes the Garden of Eden, an area separated from society, cocooned in innocence. It is an area of separate peace during World War II. Even after the incident with the tree, Finny thinks that he fell out of the tree by accident, suggesting that one's innocence can (to some extent) remain true in the face of pain and hardship. The corruption of this innocence, attacked by both Gene and Brinker at the trial, eventually leads to Finny's death. In the end, his epiphany about his fall from the tree comes not from the natural world, or his drawing his own conclusions, but from other people, his friends, and, as such, betrayal can be seen as a primary motif of the work. His death, caused by bone marrow from his leg moving to and blocking his heart, can quite literally be seen as Gene breaking Finny's heart.

After Finny dies, Gene realizes that Finny's outlook on life and other people is justified and is superior to his own. He remarks that everyone is in a constant mental state of alert that is unnecessary, and that sometimes this becomes an obsession that hinders their every action.

From the book:

All of them, constructed at infinite cost to themselves, these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way — if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy.

Other themes include man's attempt to grapple with something greater than him. Finny is often described as near-divine, morally superior to other humans. Gene cannot accept this and goes through several attempts to come to terms with this. First he rationalizes and finds explanations for Finny's selflessness by imagining his friend as jealous, then physically lowers Finny to his own level through the conscious or unconscious "jouncing." If Finny does not fight, perhaps it is not because he cannot fight (both physically in WWII and metaphorically). However, by the end of the book, when Finny confesses his desire to fight, Gene raises him up this time, pointing out that Finny's nature is too pure for something like war. Knowles suggests that by the time of Finny's death, Gene has achieved some sort of union with Finny, even seeing Finny's funeral as his own.

Allusions/references from other works

• In the movie Sideways an excerpt from A Separate Peace, in which Gene reflects on Finny's death, is being read aloud in Miles' English class. The film centers on a week-long misadventure of two college-alum friends, Miles and Jack, and a friendship that bears similarities to Gene and Finny; many events in the film are symbolic references to the novel.
• In the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Ferris and his best friend Cameron share some parallels to Finny and Gene, respectively.
• In Paul Russell's novel The Coming Storm, A Separate Peace is used as a text in English classes.
• In The Simpsons, the episode "Mother Simpson" features a discussion between Lisa and Grandma Simpson about the book:
  Grandma Simpson: Although I hardly consider A Separate Peace the ninth grade level.
  Lisa Simpson: Yeah, more like preschool.
  Grandma Simpson: I hate John Knowles.
  Lisa Simpson: Me too.
• In Stephen Chbosky's the Perks of Being a Wallflower Charlie reads A Separate Peace for his English teacher.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

• In 1972 it was adapted into a movie starring Parker Stevenson and John Heyl.
  • A Separate Peace (1972) at IMDb.
• It was later adapted into a made-for-TV movie by Showtime in 2004.
  • A Separate Peace (2004) at IMDb.

External links

• SparkNotes
• CliffsNotes