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Question

what is the point of the novel, "a seperate peace"?
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Answer 1

The novel begins with the now mature Gene Forrester returning to Devon, an exclusive New Hampshire prep school, to visit a large tree and a marble staircase. He then flashes back to his time at school there. Gene and Phineas ("Finny") appear to be best friends at Devon; Gene sees himself as constantly competing with Finny, whom he refuses to believe is better than him. Gene is a regimented good student who likes order, and Finny is a carefree, peace-loving athlete who seems able to get away with anything. Gene resents Finny's irresponsibility and lack of respect for rules, but he reluctantly goes along with whatever Finny does so as not to be outdone by him. Gene sees them as rivals, but the novel leads the reader to believe that Gene's perception is one-sided and that Finny believes their relationship is simply a strong friendship.

One of Finny's ideas during Gene's "Sarcastic Summer" is to create a "Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session", with Gene and himself as charter members. Finny creates a rite of induction by having members jump into the Devon River from a large, high tree. One night, Finny decides that he and Gene should jump together. While on the limb, with Finny about to jump, Gene jounced 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 from the tree, and breaks his leg. It was 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, while Finny is pure joy and untroubled innocence. Gene contemplates his action, while Finny slowly recovers.

Finny maintains his characteristically upbeat attitude throughout his convalescence. 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, but is 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, which he emphatically denies the existence of ("Don't be a sap. There is no war."). Finny is "the essence of this careless peace." He even trains Gene for the 1944 Winter Olympics, and very ironically, these Olympics were cancelled due to war.

The action comes to a head when Brinker Hadley traps Gene and Finny in the assembly 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. Gene tries to deny everything, knowing that the truth will destroy Finny. Leper (now slightly insane 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 flees the room and falls down a nearby flight of stairs, cleanly breaking his already injured leg. The boys at the trial carry him to the infirmary. 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 blind 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 and recalls every moment of that day, waiting for Phineas to come out of surgery, and, after the operation to reset the bone, meets the doctor. The doctor informs Gene that during the operation some bone marrow from Finny's leg went through his blood stream and to his heart, killing him instantly. Gene takes the news as a shock, but never cries about Finny; Gene believes that when Finny died, a piece of himself died too, the part of him that was strict and regimented and anti-Phineas, and that one does not cry for one's 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 Phineas was innocent, and although this made him unique, Gene believes it eventually led to his demise. As Leper foreshadows, everything "evolves, or else it perishes".


Various themes run throughout the work, one of the foremost being the manner in which people perceive threats to themselves when such threats do not exist. For example, Gene feels that Finny willfully tries to sabotage his academic pursuits with the games he invents. Such perceived threats create a one-sided jealousy between the two friends, perhaps motivating Gene to "jounce the limb" out of envy or a need for revenge. Three themes for this book are Pain of War, Coming of Age, and Dangers of Jealousy.

The novel also touches on themes of innocence and its loss. It is, perhaps, significant that the flashpoint of the work occurs in a tree, and that said flashpoint is a fall, with (given the context of the novel) a deep reference to Christian allegory, the Tree of Knowledge, Original Sin, and man's Fall from Grace. Even after the incident, Finny thought that he had fallen out of the tree himself, suggesting that one's innocence can (to some extent) remain true in the face of pain and hardship. The corruption of this innocence, attacked by both Gene and Brinker at the trial, eventually leads to Finny's death. In the end, his epiphany about his fall from the tree comes not from the natural world, or his own self, but from other people, his friends, and, as such, betrayal can be seen as a primary motif of the work. His death, caused by bone marrow from his leg moving to and blocking his chest, can quite literally be seen as Gene breaking Finny's heart.

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

From the book:

All of them, constructed at infinite cost to themselves, these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way — if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy.
Other themes include man's attempt to grapple with something greater than him. Finny is often described as near-divine, morally superior to other humans. Gene cannot accept this and goes through several attempts to come to terms with this. First he rationalizes and finds explanations for Finny's selflessness by imagining his friend as jealous, then physically lowers Finny to his own level through the conscious or unconscious "jouncing". If Finny does not fight, perhaps it is not because he cannot fight (both physically in WWII and metaphorically). However, by the end of the book, when Finny confesses his desire to fight, Gene raises him up this time, pointing out that Finny's nature is too pure for something like war. Knowles suggests that by the time of Finny's death, Gene has achieved some sort of union with Finny, even seeing Finny's funeral as his own.

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Answer 2

The relationship between Finny and Gene invloves two complex personalities both seeking to become comfortable with their own identity. Though sometimes Finny and Gene's relationship seems to be over-ran with jealousy of Finny's domination ablitites, Gene feels the need to prove that he has great potential acedemic abilities. Slowly Gene changes to be more and more like Finny even wearing some of Finny's clothes. Once Finny becomes injured, Gene plays the sports that Finny once did in attempt to be the athlete that Finny once was. The jealousy that Gene used to have was turned around when he saw the outstanding support that Finny gave him in his athletic training and Finny took the opportunity to live through Gene. Gene saw himself becoming someone that he liked very much, he saw himself becoming Finny.
Gene and Finny's relationship models codependency fulfilled by each other. Through depending on each other they ironically develop a better sense of individual identity. Not even Finny's death can seperate the two boys on more than a physical level. Gene goes to Finny's funeral and feels as if it is his own. As the reader I realized that really, it is the funeral of his merged personality. It's hard to imagine one existing without the other. Gene is left to reestablish a seperate identity.
Gene realized that every human being goes to war at a certain point in their life, when he or she realized that the world is a fundamentally hostile place and that there existes in it some enemy who must be destroyed. The novels insists that there is a battle withtin everyone with adulthood and the loss of childhood innocence. The different characters showed this in different ways: Brinker nurtures a stance of bravado and Leper by descentding into madness. In this process Gene killed killed his enemy. Finny was "better" than Gene which made Gene develop an envious spirit. When Gene pushed Finny from the tree injuring him, Gene had killed his enemy. All people create enemies and we all have inner wars because of them just the like time setting of the novel, WWII.

Answer 3

Notes on the novel "A Separate Peace":
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/separate/
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-168.html
http://www.bookrags.com/A_Separate_Peace