Pessimism and sorrow cohesive with war and malice lie in deception to create a ruse for innocent individuals. A Separate Peace is a pessimistic novel due its involvement with war, malice, and sorrow. This is due to its revolution around World War II, Gene’s malice towards Finny, and a murder caused by an unlikely source.
The thought of war routinely forces sorrow like clothes given on Christmas, which brings sadness. The first reason why A Separate Peace is pessimistic is because it revolves around war, which is a time of death and sorrow. In 1942, World War II was at its climax and people were drafted into war. Japan was at its peak in dominance and started to invade other countries. At this period in time death was rampaging throughout family’s lives. Soldiers were dying every day and those who lived came back as changed people. “I couldn’t sleep in bed; I had to sleep everywhere else. I couldn’t eat in the Mess Hall; I had to eat everywhere else. Everything began to be inside
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Another reason why a Separate Peace is a pessimistic novel is because it tells of a character who maliciously expressed his pettiness and jealousy to his friend through harm. During the entire novel Gene is rude to Finny for an unreasonable and unrealistic reason and “jounces the limb” to prove it. Gene’s jealousy of Finny’s natural talent drove their friendship to the point where it slowly disintegrates into anarchy and denial. All of these roots stemmed off from the moment when Gene- in his moment of hesitancy- shook the limb so that Finny would fall and shatter his leg ultimately crippling him from playing any physical sport ever again. Throughout the entire novel, Finny was completely unaware that his best friend would ever hurt him in such a way. His heart was too pure to suspect Gene’s jealous intent. This injury caused a chain reaction eventually leading to Finny’s miserable