A Separate Peace Essay-In what ways was "a separate peace" expressed in the novel?

Hehe...forgot to post it....(._.;)

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Scott Pero
Honors English 10
December 14, 2008
In what ways was "a separate peace" expressed in the novel?

Peace Born From War

For centuries, the concepts of war and peace have battled for supremacy, both seemingly opposites of the other. In war, it is understood that people may die, that the land may be destroyed, and that there is a clear "winner" and "loser". In peace, these conditions are reversed. Why must people perish when there is peace? Why must the land be torn when there is no fighting? There is no clear winner and loser without competition. Though they may seem polar opposites, war and peace are closely related. The Greeks worshipped various gods and goddesses, each governing over a certain aspect in their world. One such god was Ares, the god of war. He personified the rage and bloodlust synonymous with the universal symbol of war. Ares, through one of his many consorts, had a daughter—Harmonia, the Greek goddess of harmony and concord. Harmonia not only personified peace, but another concept: peace born from war. This same concept of ‘a separate peace’ is present in the book of the same name. In A Separate Peace, the main character, Gene, struggles through a World War II era New England boarding school. He deals with the hardships of friendship, the impending war, and himself. The author of the book, John Knowles, expresses the theme of ‘a separate peace’ through the actions of the characters in the book, namely Gene, Finny, and the Devon School boys.

Gene, the narrator, is a complex character. On the outside, to others, he may seem like a normal intellectual. On the inside, however, a chaotic tumult rages. At times, he is supportive of his friends and only wishes to help them. Other times however, his darker side breaks loose, causing him to doubt his friends. The narrator makes up reasons as to why he did such things. After a lengthy thought process as to why Finny wanted to do everything with Gene, Gene comes to the conclusion that Finny wants to wreck his studies. After this revelation, Gene says: "I felt better. Yes, I sensed it like the sweat of relief when nausea passes away; I felt better. We were even after all, even in enmity. The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all" (Knowles 54). Though this is not the truth, it is what Gene believes at this moment in the text. His mind is at peace through something he created separately from the real world. Finny is not so different in this sense either.

During a pivotal moment in the text, Gene pushes Finny from a tree branch, effectively shattering Finny’s leg. After he recovers and returns to Devon, he walks with Gene through its winter-coated school grounds. Here, Finny talks of the winter: "‘I mean as much as you can say a 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 love’"(111). For every "winter" and "season" in that quote, a "Gene" can be substituted in its place. By reading it in that context, we see that Finny knows Gene intentionally jounced the limb that sent him falling, and that he is coming to terms with it. Finny is not a hateful person, rather, he is loyal to everyone and everything. Finny wouldn’t like to say outright that his friend intentionally pushed him off a tree, so instead he indirectly says it. He is making sense of Gene’s actions, saying they were done through love, not hatred. He’s made peace with the fact that his best friend hurt him physically. Not only does Finny hold this state of mind in regards to his friendships, but in regards to the war as well.

When Finny returns from his recuperation and he and Gene enter the locker room of the gym, Finny surprises Gene by rejecting the war, saying it’s not real: ‘Do you really think that the United States of America is in a state of war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan?...Don’t be a sap...there isn’t any war’ (115). Finny denies a major world issue, saying it was made up by fat old men who want to keep everything for themselves. Instead of war, Finny wants peace. He does not want to live in a world where thousands of people are killed in foreign countries with turmoil spreading out of control, so instead he manifests his own, war-free world, where he, at least, lives in peace. Finny utilizes his magnetic personality to transmit this attitude to the other boys at Devon.

In the beginning of the book, Finny creates a game called Blitzball. Blitzball represents the peace found during the summer session at Devon: "We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the like the war was being fought to preserve…They noticed out games tolerantly. We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction" (24). Finny and the rest of the boys have found peace in a war-ravaged world. During Blitzball, their minds were not focused on the enemy, battle tactics, or the most recent bombing of Berlin; they simply had fun. The same can be said of the winter carnival, another of Finny’s concoctions. The boys decide to hold a winter carnival, where they drink cider and compete in athletic competitions, complete with prizes. This competition freed them from the coming war: "It wasn’t the cider which made me surpass myself, it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace." (137) Through the winter carnival, Gene and friends were able to escape the war for one simple day, and experience what it would be like if they weren’t about to be shipped off into battle. Both Blitzball and the Winter Carnival set Devon and its students free from the lingering threat of the war.

Not only do Gene and Finny demonstrate this separate peace, but others do as well. Brinker’s time at Devon can be seen as his own separate peace. When he was at Devon, he was the school’s politician, the "big man on campus". When his father visits, however, he seems to overshadow Brinker. Devon was Brinker’s peace in which he could live free from his father’s will.

Leper exhibited a fair amount of separate peace as well. When most would help shovel out a railway, he decided to ski—not at high speeds down a slope, but calmly—to find a beaver dam, simply because it is interesting. In a more literal sense, Leper escaped the war to live in peace at home instead of being discharged. In subtle ways throughout the book, the characters show their own peace, a way of getting away from reality to simply take a breather.

Gene, Finny, and the rest of the boys at Devon all exhibit the theme of ‘a separate peace’. From Leper’s "space cadet" ways, to Finny’s radical conspiracy theories about the war, they make their own. They all break free from the chains of reality, lifting a weight from their shoulders that the world has suddenly put on them. The war is rapidly approaching for them, and they know it. To escape from the destruction and chaos to live freely and openly, they enter a different state of mind. In this mind, there are no fighter planes and military platoons. Instead, there are beaver dams and Blitzball world cups; there are no overbearing fathers and every one is a rival with everyone else. In this separate world, there is peace. In a world plagued by Ares’ hand, Harmonia still prevails.