Chapter 7
Gene Forrester walks back to wash off the dirty water from his fight with Quackenbush in the Naguamsett River. The Devon River where he swam during the carefree summer was clean and refreshing, but now after Phineas has left and fall has begun, the river he falls into is one of disgust. Gene says, "I had never been in [the Naguamsett] before; it seemed appropriate that my baptism there had taken place on the first day of this winter session, and that I had been thrown into it, in the middle of a fight." Chapter 7, pg. 78 Since the carelessness and innocence of his summer activities had disappeared, he recognizes the parallel between the fall into this river and the changes occurring around him as the war's presence looms more than ever at Devon School.
Topic Tracking: Religion 6
Brinker Hadley enters Gene's room shortly after the fight with Quackenbush and abruptly implies that Gene is responsible for Phineas' accident. Slightly nervous, he denies these accusations and tries to change the subject by suggesting that they go down to the Butt Room to have a cigarette. Brinker, unwavering, agrees to go down to this place he calls the "dungeon." During the summer this dingy place was never mentioned by Gene or Phineas; they were always outside, enjoying the air and the sun. After arriving here, Gene is bombarded by another stream of accusations and implications about Phineas' accident to which he responds with the same sarcasm he had during the summer. The conversation becomes somewhat of an inquisition with shouts of "fratricide" and "treachery" coming out of Brinker's mouth. Finally Gene doesn't even have a cigarette and leaves the boys downstairs, still denying that he had knocked Phineas from the tree despite the fact he had already admitted the truth to Phineas himself.
Topic Tracking: War 11
The tone of life on the school's campus continues to worsen and become more serious. The schoolboys, previously sheltered from the war, are asked to go out and pick apples out of trees in a nearby orchard since the harvesters have all gone away to work for the war. There is an early snowfall at Devon, and this snowfall comes as unexpectedly as the war had. "In the same way the war, beginning almost humorously with announcements about [no more] maids and days spent at apple-picking, commenced its invasion of the school. The early snow was commandeered as its advance guard." Chapter 7, pg. 84 Despite the jokes of the summer and the playfulness of jumping out of the tree as if it were a game, the war becomes much more of a reality. As he is walking one day to go to help shovel out train tracks for the troop train to come through, Gene briefly encounters Leper skiing across the countryside.
Gene tells him about coming to help shovel out the tracks for the war effort, but Leper is disinterested and content with his solitude since he enjoys the picturesque nature scenes around him. Before skiing off down the slope he tells Gene that he's looking for a beaver dam near the pure waters of the Devon River. Leper is disconnected from the things on campus that have changed from the way it had been in the summer. To resist these changes, he has isolated himself from everyone else and goes off on his own, even after he had played with Phineas and the other boys during the summer. The two part ways and Gene joins Brinker, Quackenbush, Chet Douglass and others to shovel snow off of the tracks. When they have finished, the troop train, filled with uniformed young men, rolls past. The mood of the boys is solemn and there is a dull gray in the sky and in the snow. Everything is gray around them. Finally the war's spirit begins to hit them.
Later, while walking home from the tracks, the boys encounter Leper dreamily skiing past. Gene defends him and is kind, while Brinker mocks him for his ignorance, saying in disgust that he plans to enlist due to the silliness of these people like Leper whom he curses as a "naturalist." Although he is a poet of sorts, Brinker's outlook on life has been soured by the war. Gene is pleased at hearing this and considers the thought to himself:
"To enlist. To slam the door impulsively on the past, to shed every thing down to my last bit of clothing, to break the pattern of my life -- that complex design I had been weaving since birth with all its dark threads...I yearned to take giant military shears to it, snap! bitten off in an instant....The war would be deadly all right. But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me...." Chapter 7, pg. 92
Gene is eager to give up all that he had loved at Devon throughout the summer, to cast aside his academics and all memory of friendships, including that with Finny. He is eager to kill and to take part in violence. Walking home, he stares at the sky and contemplates that "the cold Yankee stars ruled this night. They did not invoke in me thoughts of God, or sailing before the mast, or some great love as crowded night skies at home had done...." Chapter 7, pg. 93 Any attachment he had felt for Devon has disappeared, and Gene decides to enlist in the military. But the sudden sight of Phineas sitting in his chair in their room shatters the joy and freedom he had felt about leaving the world of Devon behind. He forgets everything and is reduced at once to the feelings of inferiority and resentment he had felt earlier. While Phineas was away, his paranoia had slowly disappeared. Now all of the self-confidence he has gained is forgotten.
Topic Tracking: Religion 7
Topic Tracking: War 12
View More Summaries on A Separate Peace
