Kaitlin Cullen-Verhauz
11/24/09
English 9 C Band
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Set during the throws of World War II, A Separate Peace is a story about adolescent American boys in prep school, dealing with competition, jealousy, arrogance, and war. Knowles writes about how each individual boy copes with these things, based on their personalities. Each one is affected differently, however one thing they all have in common is the negative toll the war takes on each of them. Phineas goes into denial over the war, and doesn’t even believe it exists; then his heart gives out. Gene is blinded by a war that he sees as a glorious escape from himself. Brinker, once intelligent and motivated, becomes careless and resentful. The indirect, yet destructive effects that the war has on each of the boys, exemplifies Knowles’ anti-war sentiments.
Phineas denies the war’s entire existence. He says that it is an invention of old rich men. But he really is just putting up a mask to hide his true emotions about the war. “‘Don’t be a sap,’ he gazed with cool self-possession at me, ‘there isn’t any war.’” (p. 115). Finny had always been the instigator, the trend-setter, but the one mainstream institution that he did not organize, or initiate excitement over, is exactly what he longs to be a part of. Gene tells Finny that even without a broken leg, his personality would not suit a war, but deep inside Finny does not agree. He wants to step into the role of valiant soldier, but he is very talented at masking his true emotions. This shows Knowles’ belief that war puts pressure on young men to be something that they are not, even if they desperately want to meet that expectation in themselves. In the end though, it is Finny’s realization that he could never go to war, and fulfill that image that causes so much disappointment and frustration, that his heart literally breaks.
