In chapter 10, Gene visits Leper at his house after he wrote a note to Gene saying that he had escaped and he was at a Christmas location. When he got there, Leper was very jumpy and short tempered. As Gene and Leper were talking, Leper revealed that the army was going to give him a Section Eight Discharge, which is worse than a Dishonorable Discharge. A Section Eight Discharge is, “... for the nuts in the service, the psychos, the Funny Farm candidates.” He continued on, and he told Gene that he was screwed for life because people would look at his resume and see that he got discharged from the army and nobody wants a crazy person working for them, they are a safety hazard for their customers. Then, Leper started insulting Gene about being
Leper Lepellier changed a lot in A Separate Peace by John Knowles. He was a naturalist who was against the war, but during the middle of the book, he decides to enlist. Leper has always been quiet, shy, and likes to be by himself.
It is only after Leper ‘returns’ from the war that they finally acknowledge it. They then realize that only a true war can change someone like the way Leper changed. When he left he was just like a normal kid, a little strange, but still just a kid. When he returned, however, he was practically insane.
Friendship is a necessity throughout life whether it is during elementary school or during adulthood. Some friendships may last a while and some may last for a year; it depends on the strength of the bond and trust between the two people. In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the main characters, Gene and Finny, did not have a pure friendship because it was driven by envy and jealousy, they did not feel the same way towards each other and they did not accurately understand each other.
In the novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, the quote “A hospital alone shows what war is,” (263) has so much meaning to me. In my mind, hospitals are places where people get healed and become better. However, this hospital as well as other hospitals during the war make patients feel worse instead of better. Before Paul arrived at the hospital, I assumed it would serve as an escape from the terrors of war. Instead with all of the other ill soldiers surrounding him including his friend Albert whose leg was amputated, were constant reminders of how gruesome and horrific the war truly has become for Paul. This quote reveals the larger theme of survival in the novel because the entire novel Paul fought to stay alive, especially in the hospital.
In the novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the protagonist Gene Forrester constantly battles within himself to find the true emotion towards his friend Phineas and to find out who he really is. Gene and Phineas formed an illusion of companionship, but there was always a silent rivalry between them in Gene’s mind. In the beginning, Gene thought his feeling towards Phineas was completely normal and it will go away in time. However, as the time went on and Gene matured he found out that his feeling was much more than little jealousy but it has turned into hate. Gene Forrester develops into a mature adult when he finally accepts his feeling and faces reality.
Beyond the basic need for a sense of control, people are driven by their sense of identity, of who they are. Each person lives in their own universes, which are centered upon their feeling of self-purpose. There are multiple types of identities such as individual and group identities. Each person's identity is formed differently because of the unique experiences every individual encounters. The formation can be affected by many things such as their home environment, social concurrences, and physiological health. This story, A Separate Peace, exhibits interesting main characters which establish the frequent struggles of personal identity in adolescence.
In February 1761, in front of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, which included John Adams at that time, James Otis fought about the use of writs, representing the merchants of Boston. He objected writs along with the merchants that he represented, and so it was when he was in the hearing, he told the court that he refused any compensation the merchants tried to give him for representing them on the fact that “in such a cause he despised all fees” (“James Otis: Against Writs of Assistance”).
Catch-22 was definitely a catch! This “law” was the main metaphor of how crazy war really was and of the military authority. Joseph Heller used this catch in a humorous way, basically making it a loophole preventing any soldier from leaving the war. “Insane or not, the young men are indirectly forced to engage in combat and fight for a war they do not know about” (http://epubl.itu.se). He uses much black humor throughout the book, to relieve the horrors of war, death, and so on. He also uses so many unique techniques which can get so confusing, that the reader is distracted from the true terror and agony that people face in war. There are 3 specific examples of black humor in the book. For example, Heller makes the army unable to comprehend death and life. Secondly, he satirizes death and rape and last but not least miscommunication, which is key to everything.
He is qualified to determine necessity and reasonableness of cost of medical bills because he has been reviewing medical bills for 30 years and he owns a company that review medical bills.
On the other hand Finny was interrogating Gene with his non-academic outlook to get what he wanted Gene to do. Finny was never one to sit down and study he strived to be the leader of the school and his athletic teams. He was like the virtuoso of athletics at Devon. When Finny saw that he had finally broke Gene into coming with him, Finny took advantage of Gene. Finny stated “Why didn’t you say you had to study before? Don’t move from that desk. It’s going to be all A’s for you.” (Knowles 58) Gene sees grades as an opportunity to do something great and Finny sees grades as an option to the real world. When Gene and Finny have the conversation that broke Gene’s emotional state of control it also set of the mental side. After the conversation the mentality that Finny has about academics did not completely take over Gene but did affect him. Gene still strived for the grades but did not strive for the grande opportunity to become valedictorian because Finny had ruptured his mentality state of mind in academics and affected his
In the beginning of the book, Gene has a childlike attitude. Occasionally he ends up having some sarcastic comments and this gives him a comfortable life. Gene follows the rules and does not really break them. Although Gene follows the rules, he is not able to learn to change and mature. He can change with some trouble and conflict. Finny is the opposite of Gene. Finny breaks the rules and hardly gets in trouble for it. Finny challenges Gene to break through his safe lifestyle. With Finny and Gene together, Gene begins to explore life and breaks his comfort zone.
The Second World War in Europe was a two-front war: it was fought on both the Western Front and the Eastern Front. Much like World War II, Gene’s war in A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a two-front war. Unlike World War II though, his war was not fought within Russia or France, but his mind and his social life. Throughout A Separate Peace, John Knowles shows that even though Gene is not in Europe fighting the horrific war, he fights his own war at Devon. On page two hundred four, Gene narrates “my war ended before I even put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed by enemy there.” At face value, a reader might interpret this to mean that Gene’s enemy is Phineas, but as one looks deeper, it is discovered that his
A persona is a mask shown to the outside world developed in relation to consciousness, to hide the darkest aspects of a psyche, known as a shadow, behind it. Shadows contrast personas by holding undesirable and unwanted memories and behaviors, but the dark side of an individual must be accepted for the individual to fully understand oneself. In the coming of age novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, narrator Gene Forrester returns to New Hampshire to visit Devon School, where he studied fifteen years ago just as World War II had begun to unfold. The narrative shifts back fifteen years ago to Gene’s days at Devon School with his best friend, Phineas, also known as Finny, as he recalls memorable events from his past. Gene’s persona and shadow
The novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, is the coming of age story of Gene Forrester. This novel is a flashback to the year 1943, when Gene is attending Devon School during his senior year and the summer before it. "Gene's youth and inexperience make him ill-equipped to deal with situations that require maturity" (Overview: A Separate Peace 2). However, Gene is a follower of Finny and therefore gains experiences that provoke his development into adulthood. Some of these experiences include: breaking Finny's leg, training for the 1944 Olympics, and killing Finny. Through these three experiences Gene is forced to grow out of his childish-self and become a man.
Finny says this in response to Gene’s question about how he fell from the tree, “ ‘I don’t know, I must have just lost my balance. It must have been that. I did have this idea, this feeling that when you were standing there beside me, y—I don’t know, I had a kind of feeling. But you can’t say anything for sure from just feelings. And this feeling doesn’t make any sense. It was a crazy idea, I must have been delirious. So I just have to forget it, I just fell,’ he turned away to grope for something among the pillows, ‘that’s all.’ Then he glanced back at me, ‘I’m sorry about that feeling I had’” (58). In this passage, Gene listens as Finny hides feelings that Gene could have possibly been the cause of the accident, but the key is that Finny did not genuinely believe Gene could do such a thing so he brushed the feelings away. Also, if it were not for Gene’s confession and the trial held by Brinker, Finny would not have been hurt even more. Here, Gene realizes the pain he is causing Finny, “It struck me then that I was injuring him again. It occurred to me that this be an even deeper injury than what I had done before” (62). Gene was rubbing salt in Finny’s wound by forcing him to doubt their friendship. Later, when he hears Leper’s testimony at the