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Examples Of Loss Of Innocence In A Separate Peace

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Inevitable Loss of Innocence
In A Separate Peace, John Knowles highlights the life of the boys at boarding school when they lose their innocence. Gene, Leper and Finny are some of the boys who have to face the reality of the world. The boys live lives of convenience up until this school year, but now they are going through changes and are now expected to take on more responsibility as young adults. They are now being pushed to make decisions that will affect themselves and others for the rest of their lives. Throughout this text, Knowles uses Gene, Leper, and Finny to portray that the loss of innocence is unavoidable. Gene’s loss of innocence leads to a chain reaction that results in …show more content…

World War II is developing, and many things in the boys’ life were different because of it. For example, food is being rationed, teachers were less strict, and recruiting agents were to coming to see if the boys want to join the army. Leper is one of Finny and Gene’s good friends. When Gene and Finny heard that Leper is joining the army, they could not believe it because Leper is the last person they would ever believe would join the army. He did eventually come back home, but he had to sneak out of the military. Gene meets with Leper when his home to learn he was classified as insane: “they were going to give me a section 8 discharge… A Section Eight discharge is for the nuts in the service, the psychos, the Funny Farm candidates,” (144). A recruiting agent comes to a show a video of the military hard at work. The video was of men skiing down a mountain.This video was a form of propaganda that appealed to the innocence that Leper still had. This video did not accurately portray life in the army, and when he comes back from the war his innocence had been taken from him abruptly. He loses his innocence very unnaturally. In conclusion, the progressive war is one of the forces that pushes the boys into adulthood, and out of their innocent …show more content…

Finny is pushed off a tree by his own best friend, Gene. Because of this event, Finny’s leg is greatly injured. Finny and Gene have always been good friends, so Finny automatically assumes that he must have slipped or stumbled. Finny would have never guessed that Gene was to blame for his fall. Gene started to feel truly guilty for what he had done. He could not handle the pain of holding it in anymore and decided to tell Finny what had actually happened to him. Gene exposes the truth but Finny denies it: “Of course you didn't do it. You damn fool. Sit down, you damn fool,” (70). Finny immediately refuses to believe that could be possible. He is trying to keep his innocence subconsciously because he is not ready to hear the truth. He is not ready to hear that his best friend, one of the people he trusts most in the world, purposely hurt him. Finny holds onto his innocence with all that he has. Finny soon has another opportunity to see the truth. Many boys begin to believe that Gene was responsible for Finny’s injury. They decide to hold a mock trial for Finny and Gene so that the truth will finally be brought to light. They brought Finny and Gene in. They continue to question Gene until Finny would realize that Gene did push him off the tree. Once they realize that would not get anywhere with Gene, they call Leper to the stand to prove

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943 Words | 4 Pages

Introduction: Gene is a 16 year old boy attending the Devon boarding school in the year 1942. He is an introvert who is trying to find himself throughout the book, A Separate Peace. Gene befriends a boy named Phineas, or Finny. Finny is the exact opposite of Gene, he is an extrovert who likes adventure and breaking rules. The two boys become close friends, but throughout their friendship Gene is jealous of Finny.

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550 Words | 3 Pages

He initially tries to laugh it off, and jokingly confesses to what happened, but he later realizes the magnitude of his statement and quickly tries to change the subject. He asks Brinker to go for a smoke in the “Butt Room,” but Gene was not expecting what happened next. After Brinker tells everyone in the smoke room that he’s brought “his prisoner down in the dungeon to confess to his crimes” everyone soon joins in. Gene really doesn’t know how to react. He “confesses” but over exaggerates the details of what happens.

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307 Words | 2 Pages

In A Separate Peace, John Knowles uses the universality of jealousy and envy to develop a theme based upon man’s inhumanity to man. Fifteen years after attending Devon, an elite military preparatory school located in New Hampshire, the narrator, Gene Forrester, returned to reflect upon how fearful he was during the time he spent training and studying for World War II. He then decides to visit the places or symbols on the campus that were closely associated with his fear; a marble staircase and a tree placed near the bank of the river. As Gene visits these key symbols of fear, he flashes back upon his time at Devon. He remembers his best friend, Phineas or Finny, as a very superior athlete and charming young man.

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871 Words | 4 Pages

John Knowles, author of A Separate Peace, uses both character development and setting to support his decision in selecting the title. He uses the main characters of Gene and Phineas (Finny) and their troubled yet deeply bonded friendship as a way to illustrate the separate peace that takes place both within the boys themselves and in the friendship that is built between the two. Knowles also uses the setting of the novel to demonstrate the vast difference between the peaceful Devon School grounds and the war raging outside of the school’s walls. The title, A Separate Peace, as chosen by the author is symbolic of the main characters, Finny and Gene’s, struggle to find peace within themselves and with each other while set in a place that significantly contrasts the events of the real world.

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1469 Words | 6 Pages

Their friendship revolves around both of them competing in everything that they do whether academically, athletically or socially. Finny was also naturally outgoing and friendly around other students thus he was better at talking to people, which led to Gene being jealous of that aspect of Finny as well. Finny is so charming that even a teacher who was about to punish he and Gene until Finny talked to him, “he could be seen rapidly losing his grip on sternness”(Knowles 7). Finny convinced the teacher that they shouldn't be punished and Gene saw this and envied Finny even more. Eventually, Gene became so jealous of Finny that he almost kills Finny by knocking him out of a tree.

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1008 Words | 5 Pages

He feels a lot of guilt for doing this. Gene comes to Finny later in novel and tries to explain to him that he really was the one who jounced the limb, which was the cause of Finny's plummet into the water. Finny simply does not believe Gene, but this makes Gene's guilt worsen. When the boys of the school decide to have a trial, Gene's guilt becomes increasingly worse. Throughout the novel, we see that Gene's guilt is seen more and more every time that the fall is

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711 Words | 3 Pages

“A Separate Peace” portrays how Gene’s envy and imitation affects himself, his relationship with Finny, and how he finds his peace, or lack thereof, at the end of the book. Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affects him in many ways. He starts to believe he was meant to become a part of Finny. After Finny broke his leg from falling out of a tree, he tells Gene that he must play sports for him. Gene then thinks to himself “and I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become part of Phineas,” (Knowles 85).

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979 Words | 4 Pages

Beware of Desires “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else 's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation,” observed Oscar Wilde. In the fictional novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles two best friends, Gene and Finny, both go to an elite boys ' private school in New Hampshire. Finny is a natural born leader and an athlete that easily succeeds in everything he does. Meanwhile, Gene is a bookworm that tries his best to be as successful as Finny.

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849 Words | 4 Pages

Gene becomes absorbed in his anger and jealousy of Finny that he begins to put blame on him. He concludes that Finny wants him to fail school, “Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies….We were even after all, even in enmity.   The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all” (45). Gene realizes fast enough that Finny can get away with anything he wants, Finny only follows his own rules.

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913 Words | 4 Pages

For many people acquiring peace is one of their life long goals and something they strive for each and every day. When the uncertainty, fear, and cynicism inside of someone is extinguished, they are finally able to find peace. Peace is a very large topic in the critically acclaimed novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. In A Separate Peace Knowles writes about two boys, Phineas and Gene, and the struggles they face after Gene develops negative emotions towards Phineas. He used his own experiences to portray what living at an all boys boarding school was like.

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1131 Words | 5 Pages

It isn’t until right before Finny’s passing that he understands why Gene did this. The author Karley Adney supports this when they say: Since Finny can't be in the war because he is disabled, he claims that the war is fake. Knowles explores denial in Finny and Gene after the incident. Gene doesn't want to admit to himself about shaking the limb. Finny also denies that Gene shook the limb on purpose (Adney 1).

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1701 Words | 7 Pages

Without forgiveness, Gene would still be living in fear and hate, buried by his burden. Gene learns tremendously from his experiences. All his enemies were imagined, there was no need for “Maginot Lines” to protect himself from an enemy that didn’t exist. After Finny’s funeral Gene becomes “Phineas-filled” and his “war is over before it ever begins.” Gene realizes, “I was ready for the war, now that I no longer had any hatred to contribute to it.

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623 Words | 3 Pages

”(174-175) Gene is so consumed by guilt that he is thinking about everything he does and how that could indicate whether or not he's guilty. This confirms how the guilt is negatively affecting him by causing him to lose his

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1268 Words | 6 Pages

In John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, the main character, Gene Forrester, undergoes a traumatic journey to develop the aspects necessary for coping through adulthood. This novel is a flashback to the year of 1942, when Gene attends his final year at Devon High School, in New Hampshire. Although Gene appears to be Finny’s best friend, he follows in Finny’s steps so that his personality clones to be like Finny’s. Finny exposes new experiences that provoke Gene’s development into adulthood. As Gene engages in new experiences, he soon realizes that he envies Finny’s abilities.

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582 Words | 3 Pages

Finny used to ask Gene to go and do other things instead of studying. Gene normally did what Finny asked. Gene decided that Finny was trying to hurt him when they story states, “Suddenly he turned his fire against me, he betrayed several of his other friends,” and he was doing things on his own (102). The second stage of Finny and Gene’s friendship is betrayal and guilt.

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