Summary Of A Separate Peace By John Knowles

As many people know, the Second World War was a time that strained and tested people around the world, many to the point of breaking. John Knowles’ A Separate Peace is a novel that narrates a fictional story of a teenager named Gene that lived in that hard time period. Gene’s best friend in the novel, Finny, serves as his guide and the person that he envies most. Eventually, the jealousy drives Gene to jounce Finny off of a tree limb and causes Finny to break his leg. Finny denies the fact that Gene was the cause of his downfall, and the remainder of the novel is about what has to happen in order for him to mature and be able to accept Gene’s confession. Knowles’ teaches the reader many life lessons through the themes that he entwined in A

Finny changing from an incredible athlete, to a handicapped outcast is a prime example of the theme. He feels an unbearable amount of physical and mental pain from his crippling. But, it allows him to see that there is evil in the world, allowing not only his peace of mind, but Gene’s as well. Leper, a quiet, peace loving teenager in the novel is a person who supports the presence of this theme. He goes off to bootcamp to train to fight in the war, but his time there drove him into insanity. This change from peace of mind to mental chaos was painful for Leper, yet it was the reason why many of the students at Devon learned of the tragedies and horrors of war. This prepared their minds for the things they would see once they enlisted or were drafted. “For if Leper was psycho it was the army which had done it to him, and I and all of us were on the brink of the army” (Knowles 144). This quote comes from Gene when he sees the pain Leper was going through and realizes that that was what all of Devon would have to go through as well. Gene was the first to experience the one thing that was positive about Leper’s painful change. A Separate Peace shows the reader that change can seem agonizing at first, but it might turn out to be for the better, and the same could be said about

Gene and Finny show the reader that the need for independence is effective in the novel and in reality. After the accident, the two teenagers rely on each other more and more since Finny needs Gene to play sports for him, and Gene needs and wants to become a part of Finny, if not completely change into him. This proves to be a flaw as they lose their personal identities while melding into a single entity. “I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family’s strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case” (Knowles 194). Gene’s remark on the death of Finny confirms that the two boy’s lack of independence ended in misery. As they melded into one person, they became overly-dependent on each other. In order to continue functioning mentally, they had to rely on each other. But once Finny died, Gene felt that it his own funeral as well as Finny’s due to their dependency on each other, and Gene needed to adapt to the new independence that was forced upon him. Gene was not only required to accept independence, but was also required to accept the truth alongside many other of the students of