A Separate Peace Chapter 2 Summary

The reader is introduced to the narrator, Gene. He introduces a few other key characters, such as his best friend Phineas. He begins by telling the story as an adult visiting his old school, the Devon, fifteen years after he has graduated. Gene lets the audience get to know Phineas better by retelling a memory of how the two boys jumped into the river from a tree. Phineas is well known by all staff, with the reputation of being able to get out of anything. After coming back to school wet and muddy, Phineas gets him and Gene out of trouble by being charismatic and charming.

• Chapter 2: The reader learns that Phineas is able to do practically whatever he decides to do; he gets out of trouble for wearing his uniform incorrectly, makes a terse adult laugh, and

wears pink just because he wants to. Gene cannot help but be jealous of Phineas, but often bottles up his feelings as he doesn’t know how to express them. Phineas is unaware of Gene’s growing jealousy and begins to invite Gene to do increasingly more dangerous and fun activities with him. The two boys decide to jump into the river and form a society called the “Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session.”
• Chapter 3: Right before jumping into the river, Gene tries to stall by saying something to Phineas, when he loses his balance. Gene almost falls, but Phineas catches him and uses the momentum to let them both fall. After, Gene realizes that Phineas may have just saved his life. The next day, Gene decides that he doesn’t owe Phineas any appreciation as it was his fault that Gene was in the tree in the first place. Continuing their shenanigans, Phineas then tries to break the school’s swimming record on a whim and does it with ease. Uncharacteristically, he forbids Gene to tell anyone. Gene happily agrees as his jealousy is growing every day.
• Chapter 4: Gene and Phineas wake up the next day and Phineas makes Gene almost be late to take his Trigonometry test. Gene then fails it and is devastated as he hasn’t failed a test before. Gene realizes that he wants to be the valedictorian to be able to compete with Phineas and be on the same level as Phineas is. Phineas makes a joke, which Gene then perceives to be Phineas’ envy of himself. Gene jumps to the conclusion that Phineas is trying to win the “competition” as well. His jealousy grows.
• Chapter 5: A few days later, the two jump from a tree into the river again. When the two are on the tree branch, Gene shakes the branch and Finny falls onto the river bank and seems to be hurt. Gene then jumps into the river, all of a sudden unafraid. Finny’s leg is broken. At first, Gene doesn’t want to tell Phineas that the broken leg is his fault, but overcomes his moral struggle and attempts to tell Finny of his fault. Phineas emphatically denies it and says that it wasn’t Gene’s fault.
• Chapter 6: Gene returns to The Devon School after break and is housed in the same room that he used to live in with Phineas. Gene reminisces of the memories he shared with Phineas, but not with nostalgia. He takes a job as an assistant in a job he doesn’t enjoy. He is constantly teased at his work and gets in a fight with his superior and is consequentially fired. He then receives a phone call from no other than Phineas himself and is happy to hear that he is doing better than Phineas.
• Chapter 7: Gene goes for a smoke with his hall mate, Brinker. Gene accidentally starts to confess that he pushed Phineas out of the tree. He is disgusted by his past self and ridicules his past choices. Shaken, he then leaves the room without lighting his cigarette. Gene thinks about enlisting to join the army, as one of his once peaceful friends has just enlisted. He is excited to enlist and leave his old life behind when he opens his dorm room door and finds Phineas standing inside the room.
• Chapter 8: Gene enlightens Phineas on his choice to enlist in the war. Finny’s reaction is less than happy, which leads gene to believe that Finny doesn’t want Gene to go to war. Gene reconsiders his stance and decides to not enlist in the draft, which makes Phineas very relieved. The two boys begin to tutor each other, with academics and with athletics. They are both relieved to see the major progress made.
• Chapter 9: Gene feels at peace when he is doing athletics with Phineas. The entire school is surprised and shook up when a well-known peaceful schoolmate, Leper, enlists in the army. To direct attention away from the chaos of the war, Phineas arranges a winter carnival.
• Chapter 10: Gene gets a telegram that Leper, the enlisted peer, has “escaped” from the war. Gene instantly takes a bus to Leper and finds out that Leper has ran away from the army. Leper has a mental breakdown and reveals to Gene that he knows Gene made Phineas fall from the tree and break his leg on purpose. Gene is scared by the accusation and leaves the household, wanting to go back to his safe haven of the school.
• Chapter 11: Gene goes back to The Devon School where he inadvertently tells all his friends that Leper has become mentally ill. All the boys then start thinking about enlisting in the war seriously. A few weeks later, the students hold an informal inquiry about Phineas’ past injury. Gene becomes scared that everyone will find out of his incrimination and tries to get out of it. Leper, who has come back to school, makes the trial even more suspicious.
• Chapter 12: Finny, decides that the trial is unimportant as the event has already taken place, chooses to leave. He runs out of the room crying, and falls down the stairs. Finny is rushed to get first aid and later wakes up blaming Gene for making him break his leg again. Gene later finds out that Finny has been writing to countries all over the world, trying to enlist but being rejected over and over because of his lame leg. The two boys make up and Gene leaves the room so Finny’s leg can be set. The next day, Gene finds out that Phineas has died from the surgery. Gene is shocked to the point that he doesn’t cry and feels as if he himself has died as well.
• Chapter 13: Life goes on, and the school year draws to a close. Gene plans to enlist into the navy and all his friends also plan to enlist. The book then switches to the present. He lectures the reader on how Finny was an outlier in the world and never thought that he had an enemy in life. The book ends with Gene’s pontification that the apparent foe may not be an enemy after all.
• There is no preface or title of contents. The book simply starts after a dedication page and a title page. Each chapter has no title, but has the number of the chapter at the top of the page. At the end, the only thing after the book ends is an about the author page. The back flap of the cover also has a little blurb about the author, coupled with a summary about the book.

Rhetorical Analysis:
 Exigency- This book is necessary to be read because it shows the hardships that many teenaged boys like Gene went through during their life in the wartime. It educates the reader on what life was like under the constant peril of war and how the boys tried to make up for it by overcompensating in their foolishness. It puts their actions into perspective.
 Audience-The author/narrator never openly speaks to the audience, but he talks as if he’s retelling the story to a friend. Essentially, the audience grows up with Gene as he tells the reader about his childhood and shares memories of Phineas and other friends. His audience is anyone that has an interest in World War II or is a sympathizer and understands what his childhood was like growing up during wartime as they went through the same thing as well.
 Purpose- Gene wanted to reveal what happens behind the scenes of the rigid wartime perspective. He shows that teenage boys are still goofing around, even though they will likely have to enlist in the war in a year or two. He shows a war where teenaged boys are scared of the future, and aren’t sure if they want to enlist or not.
 Logos- Gene refers to his past ages and what he did in past years. Logos is also used in how the unfolding for events is due to the personalities of characters that were in the chapter. If the audience doesn’t understand why a certain person is doing an action, Gene delivers a sensible answer by trying to represent the character truthfully. Gene shows why he grows apart from his friend Phineas by telling the reader how he feels guilty as he believes that he broke Phineas’ leg.
 Pathos- The childhood of Gene is filled with an indifferent quality, but has bright gaps from when he had alone time with Phineas. The memories in which Gene narrates his recollections with Phineas and getting into shenanigans with him make the reader feel hope and reminiscent about the past, effectively utilizing pathos within the book.
 Ethos-Gene appeals to ethos in his reputation. By showing the reader he was a teenaged boy and had all these memories, the reader automatically trusts that his memories of his childhood are the same as other teenaged boys’ childhood memories. Gene also establishes his ethos because he has experienced all of the memories of the book firsthand, as it is his life. He adds to his ethos by including in real people from his life, such as other friends that back up his memories.
 Style/tone- The book is written in the first person.

Gene uses the near genius level of intellect he has to show the reader how his childhood was like growing up to keep the reader invested in reading the book. Every one of the thirteen chapters give a significant importance to the story of his life. The tone of the book is somewhat acquiescent and nostalgic. Gene uses the book to confront his past fears and revisit his guilt.

 Delivery –The appearance of A Separate Peace is faded and has an old feel. The cover picture is of a brick building, which is supposed to be the boarding school that Gene attends in his youth. The font of the title is simplistic but reminds me of cursive as it has loops. The cover picture in addition to the color of the cover gives the book a faded, dated feel as if it was from the post WWI era.

Use of Outside Sources: The book uses sparing outside sources, citing World War II. The use of World War II gives the book a more realistic view, as opposed to if the book put in a fictional war that the world was fighting. The use of outside sources appeals to the ethos of the book, giving it more credibility, as one could easily Google or search up the outside sources mentioned in the

book.

Personal Response: Personally, I didn’t enjoy this book as I really didn’t like the main character. I thought that Gene was a terrible person and that his friendship with Phineas was toxic as everything Phineas did, Gene would interpret it as something it wasn’t and would become angry and jealous. By reading this, I learned about the lives of enlisting soldiers and it made them seem more real to me, and not just faceless soldiers fighting in the war. I enjoyed how this book explored how the eminent war affected the social and psychological development of all the teenaged boys in The Devon School. The book made me frustrated at times because I found it boring and that I could not relate well to it. I recommend that we do not keep this book on the book list for the class because it is a terrible book filled with jealousy and hate. Although it teaches the reader about the “behind the scenes” of how the enlisting boys felt about the war, I feel that that could easily be learned from many other books as well.