A Separate Peace

The boys leap into action with Brinker at the helm. They send for Dr. Stanpole and gather Phil Latham, the wrestling coach who is trained in first aid, from his nearby home. Finny is conscious and eerily calm, although Gene worries that if he moves too close to his friend, Finny might become outraged and hurt himself. Dr. Stanpole arrives and examines him, declaring that Finny has rebroken his leg. He adds that it is “a much cleaner break” than last time, however. Latham and Stanpole load Finny into the doctor’s car and take him to the infirmary. The crowd that has gathered begins to clear, and Mr. Ludsbury appears to tell Gene to return to his dorm. Instead, Gene walks to the infirmary. Heading to the back of the building, Gene tries to see in the window. Although he locates Finny’s room, he cannot see much.

Gene tries to imagine what Dr. Stanpole and Phil Latham might be saying as they examine Finny. Mildly hysterical, Gene laughs out loud at the odd jokes he makes to himself until he begins to cry. Finally, Stanpole gets in his car and drives away. Gene climbs up to Finny’s window, calling his name. When Finny sees who it is, he becomes outraged, flailing against his immobilized leg, accusing, “‘You want to break something else in me! Is that why you’re here?’” (204). Wildly, Gene claims that he has come to “fix [Finny’s] leg up” (204). Finny rages helplessly, his hands flopping to the floor while his leg remains on the bed. He stops moving. Gene apologizes over and over, restraining his urge to climb into the room and help Finny back into bed.

Gene leaves, and as he walks, the campus seems different, as if Gene is not really there. In the morning, Gene wakes up and goes to breakfast, returning to find a note on his door requesting that he bring some of Finny’s clothing and toiletries to the infirmary. Gene packs Finny’s suitcase and walks to the infirmary, reassuring himself that, with a war on, his actions are small and meaningless. After all, Gene thinks, “My brief burst of animosity, lasting only a second, a part of a second, something which came before I could recognize it and was gone before I knew it had possessed me, what was that in the midst of this holocaust?” (207). In the infirmary, Finny coldly tells Gene where to leave his things. Finny’s hands start to shake, and Gene bursts out, reminding Finny that he tried to tell him in Boston. Finny remembers, demanding to know why Gene came to his window. Gene replies, “‘I don’t know. […] I had to. […] I thought I belonged here’” (210).

Suddenly, Finny exclaims, “‘I wish to God there wasn’t any war’” (210). Finny admits that since the accident, he has been writing every branch of the armed forces in the United States and Canada, but none of them will allow him to enlist with his broken leg. He even wrote to Chiang Kai-shek, desperate to be a part of the war. Finny tells Gene that he was holding on to the story about there being no war until the moment he received a letter allowing him to enlist. Emotionally, Gene says, “‘Phineas, you wouldn’t be any good in the war, even if nothing had happened to your leg’” (210). To Finny’s shocked expression, Gene continues, asserting that the moment there was a break in the fighting, Finny would be seeking out the German or Japanese soldiers to form a baseball game. He would accidentally find himself on the wrong side and “get things so scrambled up nobody would know who to fight anymore” (210). In tears, Finny asks if Gene’s movement in the tree was just “some kind of blind impulse” (210) that he followed without understanding what he was doing, and Gene insists that it was.

Finny admits that he understands, and has had flashes of anger like that before, that “it wasn’t anything you really felt against me, it wasn’t some kind of hate you’ve felt all along” (210). Gene swears that it wasn’t, and Finny tells him that he believes him. Stanpole asks Gene to come back at five, after he has had time to set the bone, because Finny will be waking from the anesthesia. Gene moves through his day, going to classes and following his usual schedule. At 4:45, he heads back to the infirmary. There, Gene finds Dr. Stanpole. Gene asks how Finny is doing, and Stanpole replies, “‘This is something I think boys of your generation are going to see a lot of. […] and I will have to tell you about it now. Your friend is dead’” (213).

While Stanpole was setting Finny’s bone, some of the marrow leaked into his bloodstream, stopping his heart. Gene does not cry for his friend, even when Finny is buried because “I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case” (213).

At the end of the school year, Gene watches the armed forces take over an area of campus known as the Far Common. Brinker joins him, noticing that the army-green jeeps are bringing sewing machines for the Parachute Riggers’ school. Brinker muses, “‘If only Leper had enlisted in the Army Air Force and been assigned to Parachute Riggers’ school…’” (216), but Gene replies that it wouldn’t have made a difference. Brinker insists that Leper will be fine and the meaning of Section 8 will be forgotten soon after the war ends. Gene tells Brinker that he doesn’t want to discuss Leper, and Brinker understands, saying, “‘Why talk about something you can’t do anything about?’” (216). Gene remembers, “I had to be right in never talking about what you could not change, and I had to make many people agree that I was right” (216). No one had ever placed the blame for Finny death on Gene, and Gene refuses to discuss Finny in any other way.

Gene and Brinker watch the parachute riggers work, and Gene thinks that in the beautiful New England summer weather, they will not be able to produce anything that will be useful in war. Brinker comments that his father has arrived and wants to meet Gene in the Butt Room. Downstairs, Mr. Hadley greets the boys, commenting that they look better than the “doughboys” (218) marching outside. Hadley mocks the men for using sewing machines and asks Gene what branch he plans to enlist in. Gene tells Mr. Hadley that he was planning to wait until he was drafted but decided to enlist in the Navy instead. The Navy is sending him to Pensacola, where he expects extensive training but to never see battle.

Gene mentions Brinker’s enlistment with the Coast Guard, drawing a scowl from Brinker’s father. Hadley scolds them for avoiding battle and caring about their own comfort, adding that he understands them but others might not: “You want to serve, that’s all. It’s your greatest moment, greatest privilege, to serve your country. We’re all proud of you, and we’re all—old guys like me—we’re all darn jealous of you too” (218). Brinker deflects, “‘Well, Dad, […] we’ll do what we have to’” (218). Disappointed, Mr. Hadley tells his son to shine his shoes before leaving to join Mrs. Hadley in the car. Brinker criticizes his father and his patriotic speech about the war. Although he will serve, and possibly even die, Brinker refuses to buy into the patriotic hero worship that his father puts forth. Gene suggests that perhaps Mr. Hadley feels left out, and Brinker emphasizes, “‘Left out! He and his crowd are responsible for it! And we’re going to fight it!’” (221).

Gene thinks that this view is surprisingly close to Finny’s conspiracy theory but that he doesn’t fully agree with either side “[b]ecause it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart” (221). Brinker leaves to finish packing, and Gene does the same, noting that although he was happy once at Devon, those happy times are gone now, “along with rubber, silk, and many other staples, to be replaced by the wartime synthetic, high morale, for the Duration” (221). Although Gene doesn’t talk about Finny, and neither does anyone else for that matter, Finny remains ever-present. Gene notes:

During the time I was with him, Phineas created an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations, letting its rocklike facts sift through and be accepted only a little at a time, only as much as he could assimilate without a sense of chaos and loss (221).

No one who Gene has met since has had such an effect on him.

To himself, Gene adds, “Nothing as he was growing up at home, nothing at Devon, nothing even about the war had broken his harmonious and natural unity. So at last I had” (221). Cleaning out his gym locker feels like the end of his high school years, even more than receiving his diploma. Gene is glad to be leaving campus as the army takes it over. He is “ready for the war, now that [he] no longer had any hatred to contribute to it” (224). Gene’s fury died with Finny, and it is gone forever. Walking away from campus, Gene falls “into step as well as [his] nature, Phineas-filled, would allow” (224). During the war, Gene “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” (224). Unlike Gene and everyone else, Finny had no hatred or fear. The hatred and fear led to a defensiveness and the creation of an enemy who might never have been an enemy at all.