A Separate Peace

“Everything at Devon slowly changed and slowly harmonized with what had gone before.”

The Devon campus has developed over time, which means that it is a mixed bag of architectures and styles. Although the elements are not conceived together or made to match, the resulting campus somehow works aesthetically. This comments on the way change occurs over time. Gene recognizes that he has changed since his time at Devon. Although the story that he relates is a narrative of his coming-of-age, and therefore inherently one of change, becoming an adult and living as one has changed him further. This changed happens gradually, just like the change on the Devon campus. But somehow these elements in himself still harmonize, even if they were not put into place as a cohesive unit.

“We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to preserve.” 

The looming presence of the war encroaches on the youthful freedom that Gene, Finny, and their classmates represent during the summer of 1942. Not only does enlistment steal a year from their high school experience, the threat of that upcoming period of time preoccupies most of the boys. The tree that eventually and indirectly causes Finny’s death becomes a challenge only because the seniors must jump out of it as a training exercise. Without this precedent, the tree looks like any other tree, as older Gene notices when returning to the school. 

“It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak.” 

Gene refers to the summer of 1942 as his “sarcastic summer” (25). In this instance, he uses sarcasm to tell Finny that he dominated the conversation at the headmaster’s tea. Sarcasm is a passive-aggressive, indirect way to make a point. It uses humor and irony to soften what is essentially a protest or complaint. Gene’s recognition of sarcasm as “the protest of people who are weak” (25) is a self-indictment. Rather than confronting Finny for perceived transgressions, Gene builds them up in his head. Addressing them sarcastically does not achieve results.  

“‘We’ll jump out of the tree to cement our partnership.’” 

Although Finny does not know what will eventually happen, this statement becomes an ominous foreshadowing of how jumping from the tree will truly change both of their lives and tie them together. After Finny’s death, Gene will take on some of his qualities, shaping his personality around his dead friend. In this, they do become cemented for life. 

“Bombs in Central Europe were completely unreal to us here, not because we couldn’t imagine it—a thousand newspaper photographs and newsreels had given us a pretty accurate idea of such a sight—but because our place here was too fair for us to accept something like that. We spent that summer in complete selfishness, I’m happy to say.” 

Although the world is at war, the boys are able to live separately from it during the summer of 1942. The war feels like a game that they can watch but are unable to play yet. Finny imagines that pilots can bomb without hitting women and children. They formulate blitzball as a variation on a war game. They can joke and talk about the war without the urgency of those who are about to enter it. 

“Yes, he had practically saved my life. He had also practically lost it for me. I wouldn’t have been on that damn limb except for him. I wouldn’t have turned around, and so lost my balance, if he hadn’t been there. I didn’t need to feel any tremendous rush of gratitude toward Phineas.” 

To Finny, jumping out of the tree is fun, even a display of courage and bravado. For Gene, Finny’s pressure on him to participate becomes a challenge to his reputation and self-worth. He resents Finny for putting him in a position where he feels obligated to risk harming himself. Gene recognizes the danger they are facing, and rather than confront Finny or decline to jump, he holds onto his anger. Gene does not view jumping out of the tree as a voluntary act.

“Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person ‘the world today’ or ‘life’ or ‘reality’ he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past.” 

For Gene, the most significant period of his life is the summer of 1942 and the following school year. The emotions and memories of that time period remain vivid, no matter how much other memories fade. The events of that school year shape Gene as a person. Before Finny’s accident and eventual death, Gene is becoming a fearful, petty person. He is plagued with anger and self-doubt. Although he notes that he has changed since leaving school, the person he becomes that year serves as the basis for the person he is as an adult. It has become embedded in his identity.

“America is not, never has been, and never will be what the songs and poems call it, a land of plenty.” 

The novel questions blind patriotism and the tendency to connect national identity with an unfailing love for country. Gene refers to the shortages during the war but also the idealized understanding of the United States that leads citizens to feel the need to fight and die for their country. By the end of the novel, Gene has learned to challenge the efficacy of war and the assertion that patriotism requires such sacrifice.

“When you are sixteen, adults are slightly impressed and almost intimidated by you.” 

At sixteen, Gene and his friends have yet to set their life paths. They are the group that is likely next to go to war, but their possibilities are endless. Older adults see this potential in ways that Gene and his classmates do not. While these sixteen-year-olds feel like children, adults know that they are on the cusp of becoming the next world order.

“There are just tiny fragments of pleasure and luxury in the world, and there is something unpatriotic about enjoying them.” 

The rhetoric surrounding the war teaches American citizens that sacrifice for the war effort is a requirement to be a good patriot. This serves to placate or chastise any denizens who feel cheated by a country in which they cannot travel abroad or indulge in extravagances. 

“The only real swimming is in the ocean.” 

Finny’s assertion is partially coercion to convince Gene to break the rules and go to the beach. But it also speaks to a larger metaphor. The school is a tame, controlled environment. It is like a swimming pool. But the larger world and the war are the ocean. Students at Devon are constantly participating in activities and exercises that are stand-ins for the war. But the ocean is real. It is unpredictable, wild, and dangerous.

“Exposing a sincere emotion nakedly like that at the Devon School was the next thing to suicide. I should have told him then that he was my best friend also and rounded out what he had said. I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back.”

Although Gene suggests that expressing emotion is akin to social suicide, this particular circumstance doesn’t support the claim. Confessing that Finny is his best friend is not unsafe in a situation where they are alone together and Finny has already expressed the sentiment. Gene’s fear of emotion is a fear of allowing Finny to get close to him. If Finny is, in Gene’s eyes, his competition, he is a threat. Gene holds Finny at arm’s length because he cannot allow himself to simply enjoy his friendship. 

“‘Don’t go. What the hell, it’s only a game.’” 

By admitting that the suicide society is only a game, Finny unintentionally indicts Gene for the importance he has placed on participating. The failed exam on the day they return from the beach is, in fact, entirely Gene’s fault. It is Gene’s responsibility to tell Finny that he can’t take part in his escapades because he needs to study. Additionally, Finny has no idea that he has been hurting his friend or making his life difficult. If Finny is supportive and Gene fails anyway, Gene will have no one else to blame.

“The effect of his injury on the masters seemed deeper than after other disasters I remembered there. It was as though they felt it was especially unfair that it should strike one of the sixteen-year-olds, one of the few young men who could be free and happy in the summer of 1942.” 

Gene’s class represents the last moment of carefree happiness before the war becomes a daily part of life. Finny also embodies these qualities. The faculty and administration continually allow Finny to talk his way out of trouble because they know that he will lose his innocent charm as soon as he goes to war. Seeing such a likeable student have his life ruined before it starts is a stark reminder of how the war has already done that to countless young men. 

“If you broke the rules, then they broke you. That, I think, was the real point of the sermon on this first morning.”

Although Gene doesn’t realize it, this statement is ironic. The school preaches that the rules keep them safe. And indeed, if Finny hadn’t broken school rules and been in the tree, he would not have been able to fall out of it and hurt himself. But following the rules also leads to enlisting in the military or allowing oneself to be drafted. When Leper enlists, it is his attempt to follow the rules that breaks him.

“It was as though football players were really bent on crushing the life out of each other, as though boxers were in combat to the death, as though even a tennis ball might turn into a bullet. This didn’t seem completely crazy imagination in 1942, when jumping out of trees stood for abandoning a torpedoed ship.” 

This understanding of sports and games, which are meant to be harmless entertainment, marks an induction into adulthood. Even the final leap from the tree, which Finny describes as a game on the evening before he is injured, stops being a game. On a campus where sports have become a training method rather than a pastime, games take on meaning, and nothing is ever just a game.

“Now, in this winter of snow and crutches with Phineas, I began to know that each morning reasserted problems of the night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn’t make yourself over between dawn and dusk.” 

Finny’s injury is Gene’s first understanding of the permanent ramifications of one’s choices. Part of childhood is feeling a false sense of invincibility. But Finny has been gravely and permanently hurt. His damaged leg will be there every morning when he wakes up for the rest of his life. 

“No locker room could have more pungent air than Devon’s; sweat predominated, but it was richly mingled with smells of paraffin and singed rubber, of soaked wool and liniment, and for those who could interpret it, of exhaustion, lost hope and triumph and bodies battling against each other. I thought it anything but a bad smell. It was preeminently the smell of the human body after it had been used to the limit, such a smell as has meaning and poignance for any athlete, just as it has for any lover.” 

This romantic view of sports and games emphasizes a world in which athletics are competitive but the competition is healthy and harmless. An athlete can push his body to the limit but does not need to go beyond. In war, a soldier may find himself in a situation where the limit is not far enough because the stakes of failing are death rather than a civil handshake and a sense of disappointment.

“There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream.” 

Gene knows that the Olympics will not happen in 1944. Finny does as well but prefers to perpetuate the fantasy. When Gene allows himself to indulge in the dream, it is not only for Finny’s sake but for his own. Training for the Olympics will achieve the same results as training for the military. But making the outcome more pleasant is harmless, just like allowing Finny to pretend that the war isn’t real, since he has no chance of fighting in it.

“What deceived me was my own happiness; for peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection inside me. So I ceased to have any real sense of it.” 

Letting himself pretend to buy into Finny’s fantasy that the war is fake places Gene into a headspace that encompasses peace. There is no war in peace, even when the peace is fabricated. Therefore, allowing himself to be happy as he trains with Finny shapes his mind-set and keeps the war out of his head.

“There was some color, some hope, some life in this war after all. The first friend of mine who ever went into it tangled almost immediately with spies. I began to hope that after all this wasn’t going to be such a bad war.” 

Although this formulation of Leper’s “escape” is pure fantasy, it frames the war as exciting rather than devastating. If Leper, who is not brave enough even to jump out of the tree, can have thrilling adventures in espionage, perhaps the war will not be devastating.

“I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family’s strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case.” 

When Finny dies, Gene’s boyhood also dies. He finds himself in a world where good doesn’t necessarily win over evil and terrible things can happen to decent people for no reason. For 1940s-era masculinity, crying is relegated to childhood. Gene must be a man as he watches his childhood die, and move forward with dry eyes.

“Because 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.” 

Gene recognizes the ignorance in his own heart that led him to hurt his friend. He universalizes the attitude that causes war. Although the argument has been made that older generations make war that younger generations must die in, Gene frames war as a human flaw. His generation will likely grow up to create wars, too.