A Separate Peace Literary Analysis

Death is often depicted as a literal way for someone to pass to another life, but no one really suggests that death could also mean a passing of an emotion. All though the majority may testify on A Separate Peace written by John Knowles being a novel containing simple literary analytics, Explanation in full detail in the novel A Separate Peace is in fact a psychological thriller. A Separate Peace explains and determines the reasoning behind the theory of the true death that Gene realizes he kills at the end of the story in an orderly metaphorical way that makes it seem hard to interpret for many readers. All in all Knowles wants the readers to understand the importance of self acknowledgement because without it, it causes the human impulse

Because [his] war ended before [he] ever put on a uniform; [he] was on active duty all my time at school; [he] killed my enemy there. Only Phineas never was afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone” which explains that Knowles does not use direct context towards the true meaning on who Gene killed during his “war” at Devon. Because Gene developed that “intense level of hatred for the enemy,” he eventually “kills” the ignorance residing within his heart for losing a true valuable friend to jealousy (Knowles 204). In fact, Gene explains in detail that Finny was, "Holding firmly to the trunk, [he] took a step toward him, and then [his] knees bent and [he] jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at [him] for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud,” revealing that this is the point where Gene figures out that he had once started the loss of his innocence from that point on, and that he has no way to make it back to purity (Knowles 60). Just in case Gene does not prove that he has lost his innocence Leper is also an example of losing innocence, in fact he is said to be the first one to experience the harsh and true reality. In particular, Leper gets a horrid hallucination after he left the army