A Separate Peace By John Knowles: Character Analysis

Enemies will betray you, backstab you and can be very difficult to deal with. Destroying your enemy will leave guilt in your heart. In the novel A Separate Peace, John Knowles exhibits peace from reality. Gene cannot handle his emotions so he creates three imaginary friends to avoid his real enemies which were his hatred, insecurity, jealousy, enmity and envy. His imaginary enemies were Finny, Leper, and Quackenbush. Creating these fake enemies affected his life throughout the story in a bad way. It caused him to live a life where he won’t accept reality. In the very end of chapter four you can tell Gene has developed hatred towards Finny. Gene believed that Finny was a rival towards him, Gene thinks he is not his friend. When Finny took

Gene developed this imaginary friend by his own fear. All of the boys back at Devon would make Leaper seem like he would succeed in war like the time they mentioned Leaper and the assassination of Hitler, his liberation and Russia, America, Great Britain and Leaper, they did this so they would all think they would succeed in the war and not fail or die. If Leaper is doing fine in the war, which he was not, then everyone else would be fine. Leaper had failed in the war, Gene is scared that he will as well. Leaper had escaped the army and left a note for Gene saying that he’s home and he has escaped. Gene arrived at Leaper’s house and explains how he got a Section Eight discharge for being crazy in the army. Leaper then says “Then they grabbed me and they were arms and legs and heads everywhere and I couldn’t tell when any minute,”(159) Leaper is explaining the hallucinations he had in the army and how he saw a broom turn into a leg. Gene could not stand hearing all these negative things about the war so he ran off yelling and told Leaper to shut up. This shows how Gene is not willing to accept reality and grow up, Not only that but Leaper had said to Gene “like that time you knocked Finny out of the tree.” This caused Gene to flip Leaper over in his chair and causing his real enemy, which was anger, kick