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Summary Of A Separate Peace By John Knowles

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A Separate Peace was a novel like no other. It brings the readers to a whole different perspective of the way friendships can be. John Knowles has created a novel that focused on the friendship of two teenagers who had their moments of gratitude and hatred towards each other. Knowles utilizes setting, characterization, and conflict in order to achieve the theme of friendship in the story. To begin with, Knowles utilizes setting throughout the book which plays a major role in constructing the theme of friendship. At the beginning of the book, the setting starts off in a private academy school in New Hampshire called Devon High School. “Most of the action is confined to the Devon School” (Student Resources in Context). During at Devon, …show more content…

Phineas was unique compared to everyone else in Devon in the sense that he was courageous in the things he did. For example, Phineas would jump off a tree that could practically kill anyone who jumped incorrectly. As well as, Finny was the one who broke the swimming record but did not want anyone to know. Phineas is indeed a static character since he stayed the same for the most part throughout the story. Finny can be described as an athletic, adventurous, gregarious, tenacious, resilient, intrepid, and honest character. Finny was the one who would tell Gene to enjoy his life and not worry so much about school. Finny was a good friend on certain parts of the story. “One cold morning after Finny’s “accident,” Gene is running a large circle around Phineas, being trained, as Phineas puts it, for the 1944 Olympic games” (Marvin E. Mengling). Finny would urge Gene to practice for the olympics and told him to stop smoking so that he would not hurt his lungs. Not all the time was Finny a good influence to Gene. When Finny and Gene returned to Devon from the beach Gene failed his first test. Gene got upset and assumed that Finny has set him up and wanted to wreck his studies ,so they end up …show more content…

Gene and Phineas they always had their ups and downs. They both contended about who was the top of the class which caused Gene to develop a sense of hatred and envy towards Finny because he knew that Phineas was the best athlete of the school with no doubt ,and Gene wanted to be the top of the class in order to be even with him. It is because of the way Gene is feeling about Finny that he releases his feelings when he climbed the same tree with Finny for the second time. Gene decided to shake the branch of the tree and witnesses Phineas fall off the tree breaking his leg. At this point, Gene does not care about Phineas anymore and does not realize that he has ended Finny's athletic career. Another conflict Gene was involved in was when Brinker and his senior friends were trying to figure out what exactly happened the day Finny broke his leg. The fact that Gene never had the guts to tell Finny in his face that it was all his fault makes Gene look like a coward and an untrustworthy

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Mary Fragalla Mrs. Teague Honors American Literature 10 December 2015 Reading Portfolio Assignment Author’s Background and Purpose John Knowles wrote his novel "A Separate Peace" after his memories from his years at the Phillips Exter Academy in New Hampshire. John Knowles grew up in a small town in Fairmont, West Virginia. He came from a wealthy family.

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Finny playfully criticizes Gene 's clothing and is grateful for the lack of cleaning service. Gene replies that it is not a big loss considering the war, and he is Finny 's bed for him. The next day, Brinker will explode, wondering if Gene is ready to recruit, when he sees Finny. He starts making a joke on Gene 's "plane" - to kill Finny and get the room to himself - but Gene interrupts him and tells Finny about Brinker 's proposal to sign up. Finny 's harmless reaction leads Gene to realize that Finny does not want him to leave.

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A Separate Peace begins when Gene Forrester returns to Devon boarding school, the school in which he attended during world war two. It had been fifteen years since he had been there. Walking through the campus Gene remembers his time spent there. The one he remembered a lot was the summer session in '42 when he was 16.

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Later on that afternoon, Gene is told that Finny has died from the broken leg, and Gene does not allow himself to cry because of it, because he feels as though Finny is now a part of him. Finally, the book ends with all the boy’s at Devon graduating and seperating off into different parts of the military. Gene never actually sees action, but feels as though he has already fought a war at Devon since he now understands that almost everyone harbors some kind of undignified hate in their heart. Everyone except

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A Separate Peace: Reading Journal A Separate Peace begins with Gene Forrester visiting his old prep school in New Hampshire, Devon school. Wandering through the campus, Gene makes his way to two distinct landmarks which he deems “fearful sites”: a flight of marble stairs and a scarred tree by the river.

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After this, Gene seems to feel very responsible for this break. When Gene later learns that Finny will never be able to play sports again (one of the factors of what makes them “even”) the reader starts to see a merge of the two personalities. Gene begins to think that he is Phineas saying “I was Phineas, Phineas to life (Knowles 62)”. Instead of using connotative diction the author chooses to tell the reader directly how Gene feels about Finny.

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A War of Self In his novel, A Separate Peace, Knowles uses the story of Gene Forrester to examine a dark aspect of human nature. Gene Forrester, the novel’s protagonist, fights an inner battle of jealousy and hatred towards his best friend, Phineas. Phineas, an athlete, charismatic charmer, and fearless boy is someone that Gene wishes he could be. Gene creates an enemy out of Phineas in his mind because of the “competition” that is their friendship.

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A Changed Life: Pessimism to Optimism Just like no one can escape death no one can escape the aftermath of a traumatic event. Even though trauma isn’t escapable it is overcomeable. The traumatic events that occur throughout A Separate Peace would lead most to say that it is a pessimistic book, but there are much deeper findings that is optimistic in the book. The optimistic view of the book is looked upon and isn’t the most obvious choice of the two but has many provable points.

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Although Knowles never told us, post-death of Phineas, if Gene had truly loved him he shows us in the first few pages of the novel. Gene comes back a few years later to Devon and goes to the two main places where he has made his most tragic memories at school with Phineas. “So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all—plus c’est la même chose, plus ça change. Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence” (Knowles 14). This shows that after all of these years Finny still runs through Gene’s mind and that Finny had a large impact on Gene’s life both physically and emotionally.

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The two are constantly together, Gene follows Finny in his every move, he is almost a puppet. Gene does not realize that he is being controlled by Finny and neither does Finny because he

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(Knowles, 183) Finny accepts Gene’s apology allowing him to achieve peace and showed him that he was all right with Gene’s actions. Even though Finny allowed Gene to achieve peace, Gene will never forgive himself. After Gene finished attending his lessons he went to the infirmary where Dr. Stanpole had news for him. It was Finny, he died. “This at last penetrated my mind…Phineas had died from the narrow of his bone flowing down his blood stream to his heart.”

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In order to show the change from boys to men, John Knowles uses symbolism in summer and winter sessions through Finny and Gene’s relationship and the war. The author uses symbolism in the different school sessions to show how the war causes the boys to grow up. In the summer, Gene and Phineas are careless and free-spirited boys who just want to have fun. They are a little rebellious, but in the summer session, the teachers do not punish them. The author states, “We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction”(10).

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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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Finny not being able to play sports anymore that meant Gene was next in line for the top athlete at Devon. In addition, this incident leads to Finny having several health issues and dying towards the end of the novel. Gene knew that Finny had no admirations towards him and that made him angered. Gene was hurt when Finn died but he still didn’t change once he went to war or when he came back to visit Devon in his elder years. “He had never been jealous of me for a second.

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Gene and Phineas were best friends, however, they made somewhat of an odd pair. Gene was a quite boy; he studied hard and excelled in all of his classes. On the other hand, Phineas, better known as Finny, was athletic, fearless, and always a leader. In chemistry, opposites attract, and in the case of Gene and Finny, the same seemed to be true.

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