Summary:
Themes from a Seperate Peace by John Knowles.
A Piece of A Separate Piece
In John Knowles' novel, A Separate Peace, there are a number of themes: competition and jealousy, the effects of denial, and how the combination war and the stress of becoming an adult can change the relationship between friends.
Competition and jealousy play a major role in the deterioration of the relationship between two boys, Gene and Finny. The competition that they engage in seems like normal horseplay, but escalates into tragedy. Because each has the opposite talent of the other, their competition is "too unusual for-not friendship, but too unusual for rivalry." (37) Gene is academic and Finny is athletic. Gene follows the rules, while Finny breaks them. Because they are so different from one another, they constantly try to excel and compete with the other. In fact, each one is extremely jealous of the other boy's talents. This demonstrates that they are "not the same quality" (51) and they are each jealous of the talents the other possesses. However, Finny denies ever being "jealous" of Gene, "not even for a second."(51) At the same time, Gene is jealous of Finny's personality. Finny can "get away" with outfits and other outlandish stuff while he sees Gene as imprisoned in himself.
Denial surrounds the events in the story and creates tension in A Separate Peace. Both Finny and Gene experience a great deal of denial in the novel but different types. For example Gene believes it "must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas,"(77), but even fifteen years later he cannot accept the fact that it is that feeling that ends their friendship. The two boys never discuss with each other the fact that Finny thinks Gene pushed him off the branch, or that Gene never acknowledges, even to himself, the fact that he actually did push Finny off the branch. He relives the events in his mind trying to remember it in a way that changes the truth and relieves the guilt. They want to trust each other to preserve their friendship. Finny says, .".. it's important for me [Finny] to believe you [Gene]." (154) The boys must deny the facts in order to go on believing each other and being friends. Later on, Gene tries to deny the fact that there is a war going on. He states that war isn't "made by generation and their special stupidities, but... by the ignorant human heart." (193) When Gene says this, he is denying that his own need to be perfect is, in some ways, similar to Hitler's desire to create a perfect human race. Finny denies the war simply by convincing others that he believes it doesn't really exist.
The war plays a major role in the boys' lives. Furthermore the strain of living in shadow the war changes the boys from children into adults. One day, as they are shoveling snow to free a troop train, and they have an experience that really "brings the war home" to them. They see the soldiers on the train and recognize that "they were not much older than we were." (89) They realize that they are insignificant and just "children playing among heroic men." (89) All the boys at the school feel an obligation to go to war. Gene's father tells them "Your war memories will be with you forever... If you can say you were up in front where there was some real shooting going on, then that will mean a whole lot to you in years to come."(191) Knowing this will feed Gene's ego, he then enlists and tries to serve in the army yet he never does so. Life becomes very difficult for all the boys who remain at school, instead of going to war. They are seen as lazy, as not serving their country. Because of this, they feel left out. They are thought of as being abnormal, because all the normal people have gone to war.
As the various themes are expressed, this book contains lessons and explanations about life. For example, war can play a huge role in a young man's life. Though this war is there, it will soon end. It will never be forgotten, even if you deny that it ever happened and think that fat men make the whole thing up, as Finny did. If one has to compete for such spots in a war and feel guilty, one isn't helping anybody but the enemy. The ultimate lesson is not to worry about your comparison to others, but to worry about your comparison to yourself and who you are.
This is the complete article, containing 768 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
