A Separate Peace

1. A Separate Peace Characters & Theme

2. Gene Forester • Unreliable Narrator/protagonist • Gene is in his early thirties, visiting the Devon School for the first time in years. • Flashbacks to a story of his childhood from the vantage point of adulthood. • Has love-hate relationship with his best friend Finny • Gene is also often jealous of Finny because he is good at everything and so carefree

3. Finny • Honest, handsome, energetic, self-confident, best athlete in the school • Extremely likable – able to talk his way out of any situation • Gene describes Finny like that of a Greek hero (always excelling physically, always spirited.) • Finny loves the thrill of competition and does not care about winning/losing • Always thinks the best of people, counts no one as his enemy, and assumes that the world is a fundamentally friendly place.

4. Ellwin“Leper” Lepellier • Quiet, peaceful, nature-loving boy • Shocks his classmates by being 1st in Devon to enlist in the army • Shocks them again by deserting army shortly after joining • Leper has hallucinations that reflect the fears and angst of adolescence • He fears transformation of boys into men—and, in wartime, of boys into soldiers, which causes anxiety and inner turmoil.

5. Brinker Hadley • Straight-laced and conservative. • Complete confidence in his own abilities • Believes in justice and order and goes to great lengths to discover the truth when he feels that it is being hidden from him.

6. Cliff Quakenbush • Manager of the crew team • Boys at Devon have never liked Quackenbush • Frequently takes out his frustrations on anyone whom he considers his inferior

7. Chet Douglass • Gene’s main rival for the position of class valedictorian • Excellent tennis and trumpet player and possesses a sincere love of learning.

8. Mr. Ludsbury • The master in charge of Gene’s dormitory • Stern disciplinarian

9. Dr. Stanpole • Devon’s resident doctor • Caring man who laments the troubles that afflict the youth of Gene’s generation. • Operates on Finny after his fall out of the tree

10. Mr. Patch-Withers • The substitute headmaster of Devon during the summer session. • Runs the school with a lenient hand

11. Recap: Theme & Motif • Theme: a broad idea in a story, or a message or lesson conveyed by a work • A work can have more than one theme. • Motif: a reoccurring subject, theme, or idea in a literary, artistic, or musical work. • Difference between theme and motif: • Theme are ideas explored by the text. • Motifs are reoccurring elements that represent ideas.

12. Reflection • Central to the novel. • Novel is spawned by a visit back to Gene’s old school where Gene confesses that he is still stuck in the time of WWII. • His ability to recall things that happened 15 years ago is tremendous. • Gene reiterates his thoughts on the past and on the lasting impact of the events he describes.

13. Reality vs. Memory • Gene shows how memory can be tinged by feelings that change how reality is perceived and recalled. • It shows us the readers how things can be obscured or emphasized in the memory via emotional factors. • Gene remembers his old campus one way, yet when he visits, he finds it quite different; this happens often, as things can seem less imposing or important when revisited, yet be so huge in one’s memory.

14. Rebellion vs. Conformity • Gene is naturally a rule-abiding person. • Finny has an absolute disregard for rules. • This theme is evident in the differences between the summer session and the fall session. • Finny embodies both, as he is able to fit in well enough at school, yet hold his own very eccentric opinions.

15. Innocence vs. Age • Gene tells of how they were children set apart from adults by their lack of knowledge of the war and their refuse to abandon to their own small, happy worlds. • Huge difference between the semi-military drills that the seniors endure versus the lackadaisical activities of the happy, peace enveloped juniors. • Just as the war encroaches the boys, their adulthood looms before them; Gene feels this especially. Leper is traumatized by being thrown into adulthood. • Throughout the novel, Gene notes the difference between who he is now, 15 years after Devon and who he was while at school. • He can identify the differences between the way he is, the way he was, and how age has changed him.

16. Conscience & Guilt • These two haunt Gene especially; he feels a great deal of sorrow for what he did/what happened to Finny. • He cannot face his sense of responsibility and get rid of his guilt. • Gene is not a bad person, he does have a conscience, and does feel remorse but he cannot face that part of himself that is guilty of what happened.

17. Gene & Finny as Foils • Even though Gene and Finny are close, they are very different in many ways. • Gene is academic/Finny is athletic • Gene is a hard worker/Finny is not • Gene follows the rules/Finny breaks them • Gene heeds authority figures/Finny does his best to ignore them • The pair get along well BUT they seem to have little in common aside from their differences. • The differences in their natures and their reactions to Finny’s accident and to the war show them as two contrasting people, as their differences, taken together, make a vivid portrait of two very different people.

18. Time Passing • Things change a great deal over time- Gene knows he has changed and grown up, the school has changed for him, he cannot regain the old glory it had once. • Gene makes mention of Finny’s accident and how it marked the beginning of adulthood and disillusionment. • Even from summer session to fall, much has changed. The boys are unable to regain a sense of peace and security they had over the summer. • Once past, things cannot be regained: youth, peace, and innocence are transitory, as the passing of time overwhelms them and makes them unrecoverable.

19. War & Peace • Throughout Gene’s schooling, war threatens to break in and destroy the fragile peace of the school. • The summer session represents the height of peace- nothing was able to interrupt the carefree joy of those days. • As the fall session begins, war slowly begins to encroach on the boys; they start their “physical hardening” at the school, recruitment officers start to come around, the boys begin to talk of enlisting and the draft. • The divide between peace and war is representative of the gap between childhood and adulthood; while peace holds out, the boys are free to be oblivious to the outside world. But when confronted by the war, they have to grow up; the strain changed them from children to adults and obliterates the peace of their youth.

20. Appearance vs. Reality • Book is made up of Gene’s “recollections”- the contents, events, and characters are all filtered through his individual POV. • Gene tries to present himself as a rule-abiding, nice kind of person; however, he is sometimes spiteful, jealous, and has quite a temper when he is stirred up. Gene is not a totally good person. • Gene also represents Finny as a happy-go-lucky sort who has been through few problems and has no inner struggles. • Finny is far more complex than Gene would like to believe him to be; and what is on the surface sometimes does not denote what is hidden underneath.

21. Change Under Crisis • Many of the boys ‹including Leper, Gene, and Finny ‹are forced to change when they come upon some sort of crisis situation, or some test of their characters. • Under the duress of having entered the military, Leper loses his quiet innocence and becomes confused and angry. • Finny'shappiness and peace are shattered by Gene's hurtful actions against him. • Gene becomes a better, more forgiving person because of Finny. • As Gene says, all of the boys at the school will change when they discover some oppressive, overwhelming force in the world; change is inevitable, as the boys in the book discover for themselves.