Over the past month in English class, we have been reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles. In the first chapter, the narrator is reflecting on his old life at Devon, and has come back to see his old school only to find out that "the more things remain the same the more they change", as even though the school is the same, the narrator has matured and now views the school with a different perspective (14). After this reflection, the reader is transported through time to when the narrator, Gene, was a 16 year old boy at Devon. We are immediately introduced to his roommate and best friend, Finny. Gene and Finny are very much opposites: Gene is a studious introvert while Finny is an avid sports fanatic. Gene always goes along with Finny’s plans, even when he is strongly opposed to it. Compared to Finny, Gene is very stoic and restricted, and is against most of Finny’s outrageous ideas. Even though they are best friends, there is an evident degree of jealousy coming from Gene, because Finny seems to get away with everything. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001NU7BQM/ref=atv_feed_catalog?tag=imdb-amazonvideo-20
However, Gene brushes it aside, because he reasons that “(t)here was no harm in envying even [his] best friend a little”(25). Later, though, he develops the notion that Finny was deliberately out to ruin Gene’s studies, and Gene, in a fit of rage, causes Finny to break his leg. Gene realizes later that he was imagining the rivalry, and struggles to redeem himself.
The action in A Separate Peace fluctuates, as there are times when the reader exults in a character's success or sympathizes when a scene becomes a complete fiasco. However, the reader cannot justly calim whether an event in the novel is good or bad because we are not omniscient--we only encounter the story through Gene's perspective, and while some of Gene's thoughts and actions are feasible, not all are unbiased or just.
We also discussed the character Leper Lepellier. Leper is different from the other boys: he is more interested in the wonders of nature than the fast paced war, and as a sensitive boy he seems to be in denial that there even is a war. We discussed how Knowles is using Leper as a symbol of peace; or, more specifically, the separate peace the boys are experiencing at Devon, distant from the war. As the story develops, we learn that Leper has enlisted in the war so that he can ski—however, Leper’s mild nature is not prepared for bigotted army life, and he runs away before he could be discharged for being ‘psycho’. Continuing our comparison of Leper and peace, the class discovered that just as the war destroyed Leper, hatred and violence destroys peace, and once such a peace is tampered with, it cannot return to its previous blissful ignorance. Additionally, army life forced Leper to conform into what is ‘normal’, and consequently broke him; while Leper had once accepted himself, the army labeled him as crazy and caused him to be diffident and believe other’s perspectives rather than his own. When Leper comes back to Devon, the boys ask him what truly happened when Gene broke Finny’s leg. It is significant that the boy who symbolized peace, who was wrecked by war, would be the boy who comes back to Devon to destroy what remaining peace the boys had by divulging the truth of Gene’s acts.
Leper’s condition, most likely post-traumatic stress disorder, is very common among “war veterans and survivors of physical and sexual assault, abuse, accidents, disasters, and many other serious events”.
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