A Separate Peace Character Analysis

What does growing up mean? Growing up has a different meaning for everyone. You are grown up when you are affected by peer pressure but you find way out from it. You are grown up when you can answer for you actions. It means you are able to acknowledge your shortcomings. You are grown up when you accept that pain is real, and it can be part of your life. Finally you are grown up you stop being controlled by your emotions and start to control them. A novel “A Separate Peace” is about the teenagers living during the period of WWII. Even though they do not interfere in the war directly, their change throughout the novel is vividly seen. The reality caused the great transformation of the boys, destroyed their Separate Peace and made them step to the adulthood.
Gene, a narrator and a main character, is an intelligent boy, who is preoccupied by his thoughts. Gene decides to enlist with Brinker, but then he delays his enlistment because he thinks he is not ready. It takes whole novel for Gene to grow and finally go to war. It is not his fault that his not grown as fast as others. Gene

Gene’s suspiciousness leads him to the action where he destroys Finny’s most important opportunity, his skill in sports. Gene pushes Finny off the limb, and he breaks his leg. Everyone at Devon thinks that Gene was the reason of the accident and not Finny’s imbalance except Finny. Even though it was not his fault, he did not blame anyone. Finny’s view-point on the situation is very grown up. One the one hand, Finny thinks that he will not grow up because he is not too matured, with his refutation of war existence. On the other hand he is suffering of being outed from the one thing he wants to do on earth most, fight in the war. He leaves his separate peace when he wants to enlist also he want to participate in reality (war) and makes his step to adulthood. Situation made them to face adulthood, and in order to do that, they had to become