While the other boys at the school prepare to enter the war in their own particular ways, Phineas draws Gene into a separate reality in which there is no war, only the clean competition of sports. Gene's emerging identity grows more and more dependent on Phineas, who trains him to take his place at the doomed 1944 Olympics. Gene finds himself becoming an extension, or even a double of his friend, physically and emotionally. The war cannot be denied indefinitely, however, and the unresolved questions of the boy's idyllic summer resurface to catapult Gene violently into adulthood.
A Separate Peace invites numerous interpretations and can be read as a parable of good and evil; a study in the formation of adolescent identity; a Christian allegory with Phineas as a Christ figure; a celebration of unity and harmony with Phineas as an embodiment of classical Greek philosophies of successful living; or a rumination on the personal, relative nature of truth. In Gene's narration, everything is a potentially meaningful part of the world around it, and a traumatic event in the lives of a few prep-school students explains the existence of war.
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