A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace

Author	John Knowles
Language	English
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Secker and Warburg
Publication date	1959
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	237 pp
ISBN	NA

A Separate Peace is John Knowles's first published novel, released in 1959. The coming-of-age novel is Knowles' most widely-known work.

Plot summary

Despite their polar personalities, Gene and Phineas make fast friends at Devon: Gene's quiet, introverted intellectual personality matches Finny's more extroverted, carefree, athletic demeanor.

One of Finny's ideas during Gene's "Sarcastic Summer" of 1942 is to create a "Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session," with Gene and himself as charter members. He also creates a game called "Blitz Ball" (from the German blitzkrieg [lightning attack], appropriate as the story is written in a World War II setting). Finny creates a rite of induction by having members jump into the Devon River from a large, high tree.

As the summer progresses Gene becomes resentful of Finny's constant and distracting presence, which Gene feels causes him to flunk an exam. Gene convinces himself that Finny is deliberately trying to destroy Gene's academic career. That night, Finny decides that he and Gene should jump together. While on the limb, with Finny about to jump, Gene bounces the limb. There is no elaboration; his actions are bluntly stated and regretted soon after they are committed. As a result of Gene's act of jealousy, Finny loses his balance, falls out of the tree, and breaks his leg. It is too late for Gene to realize that he "was not of the same quality" as Finny; that Gene is suspicious and tends to see ulterior motives where there are none. Gene contemplates his action while Finny slowly recovers.

The only time he shows any anger towards Gene is when Gene first tries to confess to knocking Finny off the tree. Finny refuses to believe it, more wounded by that attempted confession in some ways than he was by the act itself. Upon his return, Finny begins to create a fantasy world of sorts around him to avoid facing the war, whose existence he emphatically denies: "Don't be a sap. There is no war." Finny is "the essence of this careless peace." Because his leg injury prevents him from engaging in sports activity, Finny encourages Gene to build up his own physical strength and athletic prowess. (It is later revealed that Finny always believed that there was a war on, and the he denied its existence because he would never be able to fight in it.) He even trains Gene for the possible 1944 Winter Olympics, which ended up being cancelled due to the war.

The action comes to a head when another student, Brinker Hadley, drags Gene and Finny into a class room and puts them on trial to determine Finny's "casualty." They try to force the two to confront the truth of how and why Finny broke his leg. Leper Lepellier (once soft and quiet, now mentally imbalanced from his experience in the war) is called in, and he recalls the jump as he saw it, saying the two boys moved "like an engine," as in one went up and one went down. Finny runs from the room and falls down a nearby flight of stairs, cleanly breaking his injured leg. Gene tries to go to the infirmary and see Finny, but Finny is furious with him and will not see him. Gene walks around the campus that night as if he were a ghost. The next morning, Gene sees Finny and they reconcile their differences: Gene admits that he made Finny fall, but only because it came from some impulse he could not control. Finny accepts this quite easily and forgives him, but Gene is still unsure of his excuse and is not sure if he purposely caused Finny's fall. Gene leaves Finny so that he can go into surgery to set the bone. Afterwards, Gene meets up with Dr. Stanpole, who tells Gene that Finny died. Dr. Stanpole thinks that during the operation some bone marrow from Finny's leg went through his blood stream and to his heart, killing him. Gene takes the news as a shock, but never cries about Finny, believing that Finny's death was, in essence, his own death.

Gene reflects that Finny's death was a result of Gene's hatred and jealousy towards him. He explains that there is a point in everyone's life when they realize that there is evil in the world and that they must fight their inner demons to control themselves. It is at that time when one's innocence is lost forever. Only Finny was innocent, and although this made him unique, Gene believes it eventually led to his demise.

Brinker Hadley

Brinker is an elitist student leader. Brinker is, in some ways, a foil to Finny's character. He is also a charismatic student leader, but his devotion is to order and rules, while Finny's is to spontaneity and anarchic fun. While Finny embodied the spirit of the "summer session", Brinker is the king of the winter session, with its return of discipline and constant reminders of approaching war. A noted "joker", he is the first to accuse Gene of causing Phineas's accident. Later in the novel, Brinker organizes a "trial" with his cronies to "uncover the facts" behind Finny's accident. Brinker's name is symbolic, as he tends to push people "to the brink"; this is demonstrated many times in the book, most obviously during Gene's trial.

Elwin "Leper" Lepellier

Leper is the isolationist of the novel who was often ridiculed by fellow classmates. He was present when Finny "fell" from the tree. Eventually Leper, surprising his classmates, enlists in the army and then deserts during a mental breakdown (and also to avoid a Section 8 discharge), and returns home to Vermont. He then returns to school to hide as he is suffering from insanity brought on by his breakdown in the military. He is present when Finny slips down the marble staircase and breaks his leg again. His name is symbolic of his personality. Sufferers of leprosy are called "lepers" and are isolated from society. Similarly, Leper is an isolated person, avoiding social interaction whenever possible. After deserting, Leper suffers from the same hallucinations that had brought his mental breakdown to the surface while still in the army. The hallucinations mostly concern transformations: men into women, chair arms into human arms. This illustrates both the turmoil which the war causes in the boys, and the transformation that they face in the Army and the war.

Major themes

The novel touches on themes of innocence and its loss. Devon is an area of separate peace during World War II. Even after the incident with the tree, Finny thinks that he fell out of the tree by accident, suggesting that one's innocence can (to some extent) remain true in the face of pain and work. His death, caused by bone marrow from his leg moving to and blocking his heart, can figuratively be seen as Gene breaking Finny's heart.

After Finny dies, Gene realizes that Finny's outlook on life and other people is justified and is superior to his own. He remarks that everyone is in a constant mental state of alert that is unnecessary, and that sometimes this becomes an obsession that hinders their every action.

Allusions and references from other works

• In Paul Russell's novel The Coming Storm, A Separate Peace is used as a text in English class.
• In The Simpsons, the episode "Mother Simpson" features a discussion between Lisa and Grandma Simpson about the book.
• In Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Charlie reads A Separate Peace for his English teacher.
• In Perfect by Natasha Friend, the main character is reading A Separate Peace for English.
• In the movie Sideways, Miles has the students in his English class read A Separate Peace aloud at the end of the film.

Adaptations

• In 1972, it was adapted into a movie starring Parker Stevenson and John Heyl.
• It was adapted into a made-for-TV movie by Showtime in 2004.

Reception

The book is a favorite of Bill Gates.

See also

• Bildungsroman

External links

• SparkNotes
• CliffsNotes