A Separate Peace (Book Review)

Full spoilers for the entire book below. Proceed with caution.

For other book reviews, click HERE:

Title: A Separate Peace
Author: John Knowles
Publication Date: 1959
Publisher:  Secker & Warburg (novel); Audio Book Shelf (2002)
Narrated By: Scott Snively
Recording time: 6 hrs and 8 mins

THE PLOT

via wiki:

Gene Forrester returns to his old prep school, Devon (a potential reflection of Knowles’s real life alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy), 15 years after he graduated, to visit two places he regards as “fearful sites”: a flight of marble stairs, and a big tree by the river. He first examines the stairs, noticing they are made of marble. When he examines the tree, he begins to reflect upon memories of his time as a student at Devon. This exposition opens the reader into the rest of the novel, which follows Gene’s life from the summer of 1942 to the summer of 1943. In 1942, he is 16 and living at Devon with his best friend and roommate, Phineas (nicknamed Finny). World War II is raging and has a prominent effect on the story’s plot and characters.

Despite being opposites in personality, Gene and Finny are surprisingly close friends. Gene’s quiet, introverted, intellectual personality is a character foil for Finny’s extroverted, carefree athleticism. One of Finny’s ideas during their “gypsy summer” of 1942 is to create a “Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session,” with Gene and himself as charter members. Finny creates a rite of initiation by having members jump into the Devon River from a large tall tree.

Gene and Finny’s friendship goes through a period of one-sided rivalry during which Gene strives to outdo Finny scholastically as he believes that Finny is trying to outdo him athletically. The rivalry begins with Gene’s envy toward Finny. It climaxes and ends when as Finny and Gene are about to jump off the tree, Gene impulsively jounces the limb that they’re on, causing Finny to fall and shatter his leg, which permanently cripples him. Because of his accident, Finny learns that he will never again be able to compete in sports, which are most dear to him.

Finny’s “accident” inspires Gene to think more like his friend to become a better person, free of envy. The remainder of the story revolves around Gene’s attempts to come to grips with who he is, why he shook the branch, and how he will proceed. Gene feels so guilty that he eventually tells Finny that he caused the fall. At first, Finny does not believe him, but then comes to feel extremely hurt.

World War II soon occupies the boys’ time, with fellow student Brinker Hadley rallying the boys to help the war effort and Gene’s quiet friend Leper Lepellier joining the Ski Troops, which leads to him getting discharged from the military under Section 8 due to being unable to sleep during basic training.

During a meeting of the Golden Fleece Debating Society, Brinker sets up a show trial of sorts and, based upon his shaking of the branch, accuses Gene of trying to kill Finny. Faced with the evidence, Finny leaves shamefully before Gene’s deed is confirmed. On his way out, Finny falls down a flight of stairs, the same ones that Gene visited at the beginning of the novel, and again breaks the leg that he had shattered before. Finny at first dismisses Gene’s attempts to apologize, but he soon realizes that the “accident” was impulsive and not premeditated or based on anger. The two forgive each other.

The next day, Finny dies during the operation to set the bone when bone marrow enters his bloodstream during the surgery.

After they graduate, Gene and Brinker enlist in the Navy and the Coast Guard. Gene observes that many people lash out at others to protect themselves from their own insecurities. The only person he knew who did not do that was Finny, the only person Gene knew to be truly honest, and the only person he knew never to have an internal war to fight. Back in the present, an older Gene muses on peace, war, and enemies.

My Review:

I only vaguely remembered this book, which was once required reading while I was in school. The thing about it which lingered in my mind across a vast expanse of years is that one of its main characters dies and that many of the girls from my class were openly upset about it. I set out to reread and review this book with a couple of thoughts in mind. The first reason I wanted to read it is my usual reason – I like reading and studying excellent literature. Though imperfect, the best guide I have to find excellent literature is awards lists and word of mouth. A Separate Peace fits the former. The second reason I wanted to read this book is to think through why it is (or was) require reading for high school students. Should it be?

On the surface, A Separate Peace is a canon addition into the fine literary tradition of telling relatable stories about the coming-of-age experiences that take place at an all-boys private school in the American Northeast. Gene and Phineas (Finny) are roommates and best friends. Unbeknownst to Finny, Gene is competitive with and jealous of him. One day, when the two are jumping from the limb of a tree into some water below, Gene shakes the branch so that Finny falls and breaks his leg. Gene’s active and intentional role in Finny’s accident remains a secret until other boys from the school eventually dredge the truth from Finny’s memory. Upset, he hobbles away and almost immediately falls and re-breaks his leg. The two boys reconcile but Finny dies the next day after a piece of dislodged bone marrow floats into his heart.

This story fit into a compartment of my brain wherein I simultaneously do not enjoy it at all, but also understand why it is critically praised and well-loved. Personally, I could not get past my distaste for the main character Gene, the novel’s point of view character. He simply is not very likeable. He’s neurotic and at times almost flagrantly unfeeling. Gifted with a fun and gregarious roommate, he buries himself inwardly beneath feelings of inadequacy, jealousy, and competitiveness while posing as Finny’s best friend on the surface. He contents himself with the idea that Finny feels the same way toward him. Moments after learning that this is not true, he impulsively shakes the branch and causes him to fall. Shortly before, Finny had saved Gene from a similar fall. Regardless of what he says to Finny at the end of the book, the feelings that guided his impulsive actions are clear on the page, earlier in the story. As Gene is telling this story many years in the future, you might expect the truth to weigh on him heavily, but it does not seem to do so. If that’s not enough, when Gene goes to visit a former classmate who was discharged from the military after a mental breakdown, he ends up shouting at him more than once and then trying as best as he can to lie about the encounter after returning to school.

One thing you might notice at the start of the book is that Gene seems to harbor very suppressed homosexual feelings for Finny. This interpretation is relatively widespread – so much so that the book was banned in some schools (decades ago) over the implication. Eventually John Knowles commented on interpretation.

“Freud said any strong relationship between two men contains a homoerotic element… If so, in this case, both characters are totally unaware of it. It would have changed everything, it wouldn’t have been the same story. In that time and place, my characters would have behaved totally differently… If there had been homoeroticism between Phineas and Gene, I would have put it in the book, I assure you. It simply wasn’t there.” – John Knowles

I generally side with the creator of any piece of art over the intention behind his or her art. I will do that here as well. That said, had I not read Knowles’ comment, I would have assumed based on the text that Gene was a very closeted gay man and that Finny was heterosexual and had no idea about his friend’s feelings toward him. I might have even thought that Finny’s suppressed, confused, and wounded feelings might explain some of his thoughts and actions.

The backdrop of the story is World War 2, with the boys believing for most of the novel that they will eventually be sent to fight in it. The story of Gene and Finny’s friendship, and their time at Devon, is intended to mirror the loss of innocence brought about by the war. In the summer before Finny’s fall, the school’s rules were lax, education was largely unimportant, war-talk was in the background, and chaotic sports and games were the driving force of how they spent their time. Finny’s fall thus parallels Pearl Harbor. Innocence was lost and the war moved gradually more and more toward the forefront of all concerns, eventually touching their lives personally with Leper’s mental breakdown after joining the Army. The death of innocence for the boys at Devon was Leper’s official return to the school, after his discharge. They see how he has changed and it makes the war a greater and grimmer reality than it has ever been. After seeing him, Finny is forced to acknowledge to Gene that the war is real – something he has denied throughout the story. This reappearance of Leper happens almost immediately prior to Finny learning the truth about Gene’s actions in the tree. Finny is the tale’s embodiment of innocence (alternatively, he is Gene’s embodiment of innocence) and he dies soon Leper returns. We also learn that Gene the narrator has been misreading Finny throughout the novel. He thought Finny was sincere in his conspiracy that the was not real, but the truth is that Finny knowingly made up the idea to avoid the pain of knowing he cannot serve due to his injury.

The fall from the tree, in addition to paralleling the bombing of Pearl Harbor, also parallels the Fall of Man in the Bible. Gene sinned. Finny was maimed. The two of them never made it back to the good old days of summer. I am not sure that he ever really sincerely repented, though that is open to interpretation. If Finny’s Fall is intended to mirror humanity’s Fall, perhaps that lack of clarity is for the best.

My feeling of disdain for the main character notwithstanding, I have to acknowledge that this was an extremely well-written book, with great pacing, vibrant three-dimensional characters, and a strong multi-layered message. That Knowles did all of that in a book that is short enough for High School students to easily read it probably explains why it subsequently became required reading in many American High Schools.

That said, I do wonder if this book is still relevant for today’s youth. The setting is unrelatable for most, as are the lives of its characters. The cultural memory of a war one might imminently be drafted to fight in lags farther in the rearview (for now, at least) as the United States has not drafted soldiers in more than fifty years. Does A Separate Peace capture the spirit of a specific time and place, and is teaching kids about that time and place a worthwhile goal? I am not sure.

Certainly I think it is important that young people learn about war and its impact, however, A Separate Peace is not really on that topic directly but merely has that topic in its background. I think young people should study morality tales and that they should obtain a moral and emotional education. I do not think A Separate Peace really teaches moral or emotional lessons, either, unless “bad things happen” is a lesson. Maybe it is. Should young people study literature to appreciate the quality of its craftsmanship? If so, then A Separate Peace probably fits best as required reading under that reasoning, though I lean toward believing that level of instruction is probably more well-suited to a university setting than a high school, inasmuch as it can be limited to the students who really want the knowledge.

As a result, I conclude that I do not really view A Separate Peace as a story that needs to be required reading for High School students, I did not really enjoy the book a lot myself, AND YET I think it is a good and well-written book.

Have you read A Separate Peace? If so, what did you think?