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A Separate Peace River Analysis

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The Two Rivers In a Separate Peace

Novels have contrasting objects or places that help explain the meaning of the story. In “A Separate Peace,” the two rivers that surrounded Devon represented two worlds going on at the time. The Devon river, clear and clean, represented the school and the life of the students. The Naguamsett river on the other hand was dirty and nasty, this river represented the war happening at the time, which was World War II. The students at Devon would only use the Devon river, the reason behind this is that it was clean, omitting to use the disgusting Naguamsett river. Gene explains that the Naguamsett river symbolized the defective side of the world dreadful and unacceptable. Gene later illustrates how the Devon …show more content…

After Finny falls from the tree that generated him to break his leg and causes him not to be able to play football ever again. While Gene knows he is guilty, he wants to confess to Finny that it was he who shook the tree, but does not have the valor to tell him the truth, and since Gene will not tell Finny, Finny tells everyone that his injury was caused by him losing his balance and fell off the tree. Then after a while, Gene finally tries to tell Finny that it was he that shook the tree, but Finny won’t believe him and continues to believe it was him losing his balance. Then comes Brinker that assembles everybody to tell Finny that it was Gene that shook the tree, but then they start saying that Gene did it on purpose. Finny could not stand being there with everyone, so he tries to leave the assembly, unfortunately, as Finny tries to go down the stairs, he falls down and breaks his leg again, and was rushed to the doctor. When Gene goes to the doctor to visit Finny, Gene tells Finny everything that happened, Even Though Finny was shocked to know that his best friend would actually do something like that, he eventually forgave him because he was his best friend. So what the two rivers represent in this part of the story is that both Gene and Finny have a love-hate relationship. The reason for this is because at the beginning of the story Gene and Finny were the best of friend and the Devon river symbolizes

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