Jefi Varghese
12/10/08
Eng Hon 10: B
A Separate Peace essay

The Coming Of Age
Every human being goes to war at a certain point in their life, when he or she realizes this
then they understand that the world is fundamentally a hostile place and that, in it there exists
some kind of enemy that must be destroyed. The novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles,
without doubt connects this realization of the necessity of a personal war with adulthood and the
loss of childhood innocence. Finny and Gene struggle against their inner turmoil to understand
who they really are underneath and to figure out a place in the adult world. Gene Forrester, only had admiration for Finny in the beginning of the novel. He admired Finny for being the best athlete and the boy who could get away with anything. They were, "careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought as a sign of the life the war was ബിംഗ് fought to preserve...they noticed our games tolerantly. We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction" (Knowles 24). Gene explains that they were innocent and carefree from the troubles around them. They preserved a separate peace that reminded the teachers of what they were fighting for and so they were lenient about the rules and regulations. The teachers and everyone else around them experienced the carefree happiness that surrounded the two boys. They were able to absorb the separate peace into their lives. And thus during this carefree innocent summer session, peace flourished in Devon. But soon summer faded and fall acceded.
Gene’s admiration towards Finny slowly changes. Before he used to deny his feelings of
envy towards Finny because he wanted to assure himself that, he was not envious.. The first time he realizes his envy towards Finny and accepts it to make himself feel better is when he thinks, "you and Phineas are even already. You are even in enmity. You are both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone. You did hate him for breaking that school swimming record, but so what? He hated you for getting an A in every course but one last term" (53). Gene is clearly stating here that he was envious of Finny when he broke the swimming record and did not want anyone to know about it. He wants to make himself feel better for being jealous of his best friend by making himself believe that Finny is also envious of him. One of the key factors that Gene
forgets about Finny is that when Finny broke the record and wanted, "to keep silent about this
amazing happening deepened the shock for me. It made Finny seem too unusual for- not for
friendship, but too unusual for rivalry" (45). Here Gene openly admits that Finny is incapable of
rivalry and yet he assumes that Finny is jealous over his good grades. "I knew that there never
was and could never have been any rivalry between us. I was not the same quality as he. I
couldn’t stand this" (59). This is where Gene finally realizes that he was not envious of Finny for
being athletic but at the fact that Finny could remain so carefree and childlike betwixt all the
convulsion and the fact that he could never be like him even if he tried. This realization brought him into such uncontrollable rage and jealousy that he couldn’t control his knees when he climbed the tree. He took a step, his knees bent and he jounced the limb, not that he bent his knees but that his knees bent, making it seem as though he had nocontrol over his knees. His jealousy was out of control, it possessed his knees and caused them to bent and jounce the limb. Gene changed from his careless self to his dark and envious side, whenhe realized the truth and accepted it. Acceptance of that envy is what caused Gene to lose his innocence. This realization helped him to identify his dark side and start fighting against it after seeing what it could do to the people he loved the most. For Gene, he needed to lose his childlike innocence for many reasons. One because if he had not accepted his envy towards Finny then he would have kept on trying to tell himself that he just admired Finny and that he was happy for him; which would be practically lying to himself. Second because he wouldn’t have found his lurking dark side and start his war with it before it was too late. On the other hand, Finny didn’t deserve his innocent world ‘shattered’.
For Finny, everyone was a friend; no one deserved fear and hatred. This innocense contributed to a moral superiority in Finny. The summer session was full of such innocent peacetime, when the war still seemed far away. After the accident, however, Finny is forced to find a sense of peace in denial. His fall symbolizes a figurative fall from innocence. When Finny says, "‘as much as you can say season can love. What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to be’"(111), he is talking
about Gene. This shows how Finny is trying to cope with truth about his accident. He is trying to
make himself believe, just like Gene, that if you love someone or something it has to love you
back. This also shows his innocent way of perceiving things because you can love something and
it can hate you back. It is the same way how he thinks everyone wins in sports. He does not think about the losing part. And does not believe there is hatred in the world. This is one of the main reasons why he does not belong in the war. He is the peace, he is what the war is being fought to preserve. When Gene says, "Phineas, you wouldn’t be any good in a war, even if nothing had happened to your leg"(190), he is trying to tell Finny that he is no good in war because he does not have hatred. He cannot hate, or kill anyone because of his expanding sphere of loyalty and loving everyone. That is how he connects himself to the world and that is how he finds his place in the world.
Leper’s theory of survival was that, "everything has to evolve or else it perishes...it’s like
a test, isn’t it, and only the things and the people who’ve been evolving the right way survives"
(125). This theory applies to Gene and Finny because, Gene evolved from being an envious
person to a person evolving to become a better person by trying to destroy his dark self. Finny is a totally different case. After the accident Finny turned bitter. He has evolved but not in the രിഘ്റ്റ് way. Towards the end he forgives Gene for what he did, and by then he was starting to evolve in the right way but it was too late because his bone that was set came lose on the night Gene came to say sorry, the day before he died. His fate was sealed when he lashed out at Gene that night. When he forgave Gene, his innocence was coming back. even though he had knowledge of the world of hatred and people that lose sports, he knew that he could still be the separate peace by being himself and by making everyone around him a part of this peace. Either way his fate was to die because, according to Leper’s theory, if Finny had not forgiven Gene and remained bitter then he was evolving the wrong way therefore he would die. If he had forgiven him, which he did, then his innocence would come back and that meant he did not evolve at all and thus he was doomed to die. However there were many ways the other students of Devon coped with their coming of age.
The students of Devon and Gene are prompted from naive childhood into a cognition of
good and evil that marks them as adults. Leper’s reaction to the enemy is to lose himself in
madness. Most of Leper’s hallucinations involve transformation of some kid, such as men
turning into women and arms of chairs turning into human arms. Which means that his visions
reflect the fear of adolescence, in which the transformation of boys into men causes anxiety and
inner turmoil. Brinker copes by assuming a bravado and insisting order. Brinker represents the
positive sense of responsibility that comes with adulthood. Such as when he convinces Gene to
enlist , Gene gladly moves towards accepting obligations and leaving the carefree, childhood
behind. But Brinker also represents the cynicism of adolescence. He suspects Gene in his
involvement in Finny’s fall. In the end however he begrudges the war for its injustice and
madness.
Adulthood is a world of superficiality and hypocrisy while childhood is a world of
innocence, curiosity, and honesty. The war plays a major role in this book. The war represents the loss of innocence and the coming of age. Finny could not find a place in the world full of hatred because his heart did not have any. He did not have anything ignorant in his heart, and so he died. But when he died he left Gene his separate peace, thus helping Gene find a place in the world by still keeping part of Finny alive in him. "‘ Listen pal if I can’t play sports then you’re going to play them for me’. 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 Finny"(85). In this quote each boy, by becoming part of each other, protects himself from reality; Finny from his physical disability and Gene from his moral disability. That is why Gene could not refer to Finny in past tense because part of Finny was still alive in him. Which in a way, Finny also found a place in the world, through Gene. They both found a place in the adult world through each other.

1)" he had gotted away with everything. i felt a sudden stab of disappointment. that was because i just wanted to see some more excitement;that must have been it"(28)

2) In this quote the narrator(Gene)is telling us that he was disappointed that Finny didn't get into trouble and he is assuring himself that he was disappointed because he was expecting for the first time Finny might get caught and that there might be some excitment. this is a forshadowing that Gene might cause the breaking point in their friendship with his envy for Finny because its alright to envy a friend as long as you tell them about it, but Gene doesn't and that will cause their friendship to break. Gene is not secure with himself and thats why he does everything Finny tells him to do because he is afraid tabout what Finny might think about him if he didn't do it.

3) Does Finny ever envy Gene in anyway? Will he also be the reason for their breking point in their friendship?