A Separate Peace Chapter Summaries

3.A Separate Peace starts off with our main character and narrator, Gene Forrester, revisiting his prep school fifteen years after he left it. Gene explores the area, but mostly seems interested in a tree, that if a very important object throughout the entirety of the book. Half way through the first chapter, we begin to see why the tree is so important when Phineas and Gene jump off of it. The reader soon learns that Finny (Phineas) and Gene are roommates and best friends, who have even made a club known as Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session. As the story progresses, Finny and Gene are steadily becoming closer friends, though secretly, Gene is starting to feel a deep rivarly towards Finny. He thinks that Finny is trying to indirectly

Then later that night, Gene and Finny are pulled from bed by a group of several other boys from Devon and are questioned about what really happened before Finny fell out of the tree. Even Leper is questioned. When Leper begins to say that Gene purposely shook the branch, Finny stands up and shouts about how he doesn’t care either way, before running away, falling down the stairs, and breaking his leg a second time. Later, Gene sneaks into the infirmary where Finny is staying but he is absolutely furious, and makes him leave. The next morning he tries to visit Finny again, and they both agree that his actions on the tree was not on purpose. Later on that afternoon, Gene is told that Finny has died from the broken leg, and Gene does not allow himself to cry because of it, because he feels as though Finny is now a part of him. Finally, the book ends with all the boy’s at Devon graduating and seperating off into different parts of the military. Gene never actually sees action, but feels as though he has already fought a war at Devon since he now understands that almost everyone harbors some kind of undignified hate in their heart. Everyone except