A Separate Peace Chapter Summaries

Gene always competes with Finny he attempts to be better than Finny at everything, and once Finny dies, the competition dies as well. At Finny’s funeral, Gene states, “I could not escape a feeling that this way my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case” (194). Finny is Gene’s whole life, so when Finny dies, half of Gene dies too, and Gene has to learn to live without Finny. Gene cannot even talk about Finny after his death as he explains, “I never talked about Phineas and neither did anyone else…I could not use past tense” (202). Gene is in denial of his friend’s death.

Finny is in the infirmary because Gene jounced the limb on a tree which caused him to lose his balance, plummet into the river bank, and shatter his leg. Finny does not remember Gene’s rampacious action, which caused the accident. Prior to the fall, Gene thought Finny was his enemy, and that Finny was trying to sabotage his academics. Gene realizes he was being paranoid about him, so he regretfully thinks, “‘I thought we were competitors! It was so ludicrous I wanted to cry’” (Knowles 66).

Mr. Pignati’s pig collection, a memory of Conchetta, has been destroyed and her dresses ripped apart. Mr. Pignati returns home early to the sight of this, and he is devastated. The police take John and Lorraine home, who make plans with Mr. Pignati to take him to the zoo as a way to say sorry. He is somber and frail-looking the entire way through, and the kids try their best to make things right. At the monkey house, they discover that Bobo the baboon has died while Mr. Pignati was at the hospital, and after learning this he drops dead.

One important event that happened in A Separate Peace is when Gene tries to confess to Finny that he pushed the branch down, which ended in Finny shattering his leg. This happens during their Summer Vacation. Gene goes to visit Finny at his house, where Finny has been recovering from his injury. When Gene first arrived at Finny’s dwelling, Finny was his jokester self, while Gene was nervously awaiting the moment of his divulgence. Gene eases Phineas into the conversation of the incident, at the same time he bluntly states that he was the cause.

After his leave, he goes to a training camp where he empathizes with the Russian prisoners. When he returns to the front he gets separated and is stuck in a shell hole with a French soldier. Paul is forced to kill the soldiers and feels guilty because, like him, the soldier has a family and friends who will miss him. After he reunites with his friends, they are sent to guard supplies and there they break into a house to feast and do as they please. At that time they were attacked and Paul and Kropp end up at a catholic hospital.

The Outsiders, by S.E Hinton, is about greasers and socs fighting. When Ponyboy went to the movies with Johnny and Dally, he came home later and his brother, Darry, gets mad and accidentally hits him. Ponyboy gets mad and runs away with Johnny, but while running, they come across a group of socs, and one of the socs, Bob, tried to drown Ponyboy, so Johnny stabbed him for self defense. They go to Dally for help and he tells them to hide out in an abandoned church and he would meet them there later, and when he does, they go out to eat, but come back to a burning church. Ponyboy and Johnny run in to save the children inside, but Johnny was left in a critical condition, and died later on at the hospital.

Without his parents care and attention, Dally ends up in jail at the age of ten, while Johnny gets beat up by his father, yelled at by his mother, or completely ignored altogether. He tells Ponyboy ““I walk in that house, and nobody says anything. I walk out, and nobody says anything. I stay away all night, and nobody notices.””(51) Although Johnny knows his parents don’t care, he still asks Dally if they asked about him when he and Ponyboy ran

Then, when they went to the camp, he starts to see all the things that 's happening. He starts to ask himself questions of why this is happening to him and that if there’s even a God that exist in this world. Lastly, his Father dies from the weather, and he couldn’t even cry because Elie was so empty inside. Also, he gets an infection and went straight to the hospital, but he notice when he looked himself that he wasn’t the same person anymore. There was nothing in his mind but remember what he looked like.

Ponyboy has never thought of Darry as really absolutely caring for him, and he thought that Darry hitting him really sealed that he didn 't care. He is seeing that hes trying to be apologetic. “Jerry, some of the kids are missing...They’ve been missing for at least a half an hour. I thought they were climbing the hill...Then we all froze. Faintly, just faintly you could hear someone yelling.

It all started when he passes out on the way to the dentist because he is scared. Later that night he decides to go back and have a tooth pulled out to show that he is brave and not scared. After he forces the dentist to pull his tooth he keeps it and shows his squad members to prove that he isn't afraid and is willing to fight. A third example of the theme in the book talks about squad member Norman Bowker. Before he left for war his father told him to come home with all possible metals.