Summary Of A Separate Peace By John Knowles

A Separate peace is novel, which is drawn into internal and external war conflicts throughout the novel. The author John Knowles focuses mainly on the internal conflict, which is war with oneself. He portrays this through the character of Gene. The external conflict is also war, which is played as the setting in the novel.
Gene goes through a form of internal conflict, he fights within himself about jealousy and fear. Through the course of the book Gene feels jealous of Finny, but he’s not too sure. “This time he wasn't going to get away with it. I could feel myself becoming unexpectedly excited at that” (John Knawels, 27). Finny, gets away with anything, which makes Gene jealous but when he’s about to get in trouble, he’s excited. He labels him as the enemy, yet he adores him. In the novel Gene pushes Finny out of the tree, he thinks he did it out of jealousy, he thought that they weren’t really friends and

The war what so ever has a major impact on the characters. The characters fear that they would be drafted into the war because they are of that age. Their life isn’t much enjoyable, though they try to make the best out of it, but most of their luxuries and supplies go to the war, “Oh Christ, it’s not made up, What is all this crap about no maids?”(104). The war impacts the characters mentally as well. When Leper joins the army he has a mental breakdown is discharged from the military, and when Gene goes to visit him he wasn’t the same old Leper he was, he had turned into a harsh and cruel person. Finny is impacted in this war conflict majorly as well, because he wants to join the army but he cannot due to his broken leg, so he makes up the story of the war being fake and not real. He keeps telling himself and Gene, that the war is a made up tale by the leaders of the country so they can remain in power and get all the