A Separate Peace Character Analysis

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At one level, John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, is about a quest for peace--world peace, inner peace, as well as peace in personal relationships. In the novel, the Devon school is a source of peace for the students, acting as an escape from the war going on in the world around them. Finny searches for a way to find inner peace after his accident by denying there the war was even real. Gene seeks peace in his friendship with Finny after being filled with guilt for what he had done to his friend.

Throughout the novel A Separate Peace there is a constant search for world peace. During a time of great war and destruction it was very difficult to find peace except for the Devon school. At Devon there was no sign of war. There was constant calm with no trace that a war was going on anywhere in the world. The school secluded the boys from knowing what was really going on in the war. They may have seen pictures and helped shovel railroads, …show more content…

After his accident though he needed to find inner peace in order to accept what happened to him. He loved sports and excelled exceedingly at them but after he broke his leg he was done with sports forever. He was lucky to be able to walk. The accident took nearly everything from him including his inner peace. In order to regain his peace he invented the idea that there was no war. If there was no war his accident would be more bearable. With the war he was being left out since he could not fight. Without the war he might not be able to do sports but he was still involved with everything going on. Finny insisted the war was just made up all the while he was trying to join the war. Until he could be a part of it it was not real to him. By denying the war was real he was able to maintain a level of peace about his accident but until the truth came out about his accident he would not be able to gain the inner peace he really

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