His good-naturedness and passive fascination with nature is such an ideal image of innocence that it seems almost depressing to see him in the traumatized state of mind after enlisting. Even while everyone is volunteering to shovel snow to aid the war effort and discussing their plans for which division to enlist in, Leper is only concerned with the beauty of nature and skis to a beaver dam to watch the beavers develop and build their dam.
He is moved to join the army not for vain images of glory and glamor like the other students, but rather for the beauty of skng down a mountain. Obviously, he soon finds that the army is too much for him, and while absent from the ongoings at Devon he loses every shred of innocence and guilelessness that previously surrounded his character. When Gene meets him, his psyche is obviously changed to such a point that he has hallucinations and other symptoms of schizophrenia, caused by his rapid ascension into adult matters.
He does not accept reality nearly as well as Finny does because his character was far more innocuous at the start of the novel. So many of his images of the world are shattered that it can be seen that he feels like he has little familiarity to hold onto. He grasps to every gleam of regularity and unchangeable function, which explains his preference for spending time in the dining room of his house simply because he knows that three daily meals will be served there on a consistent basis.
However, his time at home seems to have given him time to cope with the images of adulthood. Upon his return to Devon, he seems mentally well and a much more decisive authority than ever before. Evidently, Leper has dealt with the loss of innocence caused by his abrupt initiation into adulthood and has become a more confident, self-assured person in spite of it. Knowles makes it apparent throughout A Separate Peace that while the loss of innocence may often seem to be a sad or tragic event, it is necessary to pave the way for maturation and a transition into adulthood.
He says to Gene : It was just some kind of blind impulse you had in the tree there, you didn't know what you were doing. Was that it? Gene replies instantly, "Yes, yes, that was it. In other words, Finny convinces himself that Gene never meant to hurt him because that is what he must believe.
What does Finny's death symbolize? Throughout Finny and Gene's friendship, Gene had always been the steady backbone of the two, and so in Finny's death he represents the bones. The poison that killed Finny , whether it was Gene's savageness or his own marrow, had a simple yet deadly effect: stopping his heart.
Why does Brinker apologize for his father's lecture? He lectures them on the importance of serving their country honorably, saying that their lives will be defined in large part by what they do in the war.
He leaves, and Brinker apologizes for his father's attitude, denouncing the older generation for causing the war and then expecting the younger generation to fight it. Does Gene feel guilty Separate Peace? Gene feels intensely guilty for causing Finny's accident. The theme of guilt is constant throughout the novel after Finny's fall.
This shows how Gene feels and his character. Why does Finny apologize to Gene? Gene then states that he tried to catch hold of Finny but that Finny fell away too fast. Finny tells him that he has the same shocked facial expression now that he did on the tree.
Finny hints that he had a vague notion that Gene was the cause, but he refuses to accept this idea and apologizes for even considering it. Is a separate peace a true story? Why does Gene envy Finny? It is true that Finny is just one of those guys that everyone knows and is attracted to because he is innately good, despite his constant rule-breaking. How does Finny break his leg the second time? After Leper's testimonial, Finny shouts that he doesn't care and leaves the assembly hall after cursing at Brinker.
He then falls down the marble stairs and breaks his leg for the second time. We were even after all, even in enmity. The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all. He had never been jealous of me for a second.
Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he. Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud. It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him make.
With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten. Across the hall […] where Leper Lepellier had dreamed his way through July and August amid sunshine and dust motes and windows through which the ivy had reached tentatively into the room, here Brinker Hadley had established his headquarters.
Emissaries were already dropping in to confer with him. 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.
To enlist. To slam the door impulsively on the past, to shed everything down to my last bit of clothing, to break the pattern of my life […]. The war would be deadly all right. But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case. I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy.
Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there. Only Phineas never was afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone. A Separate Peace. Plot Summary. Ludsbury Dr. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts.
The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of every Shakespeare play. Sign Up. Already have an account? Sign in. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Literature Poetry Lit Terms Shakescleare. Download this LitChart! Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Themes All Themes. Symbols All Symbols. Theme Wheel. Everything you need for every book you read. The way the content is organized and presented is seamlessly smooth, innovative, and comprehensive.
His freewheeling behavior often gets him into trouble, but his charm saves him from every potential disciplinary snag. This misunderstanding leads Gene to cause Finny to fall out of a tall tree , thereby ruining his athletic career and altering the course of his life. And though Finny suspects that Gene did this on purpose, he never accuses him of this behavior because he values their friendship too much, believing that it would be wrong to level such claims at his best friend.
If anything can be said against Finny, it is that he is overly optimistic and idealistic, choosing to see the best in people instead of focusing on certain harsh realities. Similarly, he hatches a conspiracy theory that World War II is a hoax, insisting upon this to Gene as a way of distracting himself from his disappoint that he can no longer join the military.
This is the same kind of denial he applies to his relationship with Gene, choosing to force any suspicion out of his mind until Brinker Hadley forces him to reconstruct the memory of his fall, at which point he realizes that Gene caused his injury. Despite all that has happened, though, he manages to forgive Gene before dying.
For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:. Chapter 1 Quotes. Related Themes: War and Rivalry. Page Number and Citation : 14 Cite this Quote.
Explanation and Analysis:. Chapter 2 Quotes. Page Number and Citation : 24 Cite this Quote. Chapter 3 Quotes. Page Number and Citation : 45 Cite this Quote. Chapter 4 Quotes.
Page Number and Citation : 53 Cite this Quote. Related Symbols: The Tree. Page Number and Citation : 59 Cite this Quote.
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