Summary Of A Separate Peace By John Knowles

A Separate Peace was a novel like no other. It brings the readers to a whole different perspective of the way friendships can be. John Knowles has created a novel that focused on the friendship of two teenagers who had their moments of gratitude and hatred towards each other. Knowles utilizes setting, characterization, and conflict in order to achieve the theme of friendship in the story.

To begin with, Knowles utilizes setting throughout the book which plays a major role in constructing the theme of friendship. At the beginning of the book, the setting starts off in a private academy school in New Hampshire called Devon High School. “Most of the action is confined to the Devon School” (Student Resources in Context). During at Devon,

Phineas was unique compared to everyone else in Devon in the sense that he was courageous in the things he did. For example, Phineas would jump off a tree that could practically kill anyone who jumped incorrectly. As well as, Finny was the one who broke the swimming record but did not want anyone to know. Phineas is indeed a static character since he stayed the same for the most part throughout the story. Finny can be described as an athletic, adventurous, gregarious, tenacious, resilient, intrepid, and honest character. Finny was the one who would tell Gene to enjoy his life and not worry so much about school. Finny was a good friend on certain parts of the story. “One cold morning after Finny’s “accident,” Gene is running a large circle around Phineas, being trained, as Phineas puts it, for the 1944 Olympic games” (Marvin E. Mengling). Finny would urge Gene to practice for the olympics and told him to stop smoking so that he would not hurt his lungs. Not all the time was Finny a good influence to Gene. When Finny and Gene returned to Devon from the beach Gene failed his first test. Gene got upset and assumed that Finny has set him up and wanted to wreck his studies ,so they end up

Gene and Phineas they always had their ups and downs. They both contended about who was the top of the class which caused Gene to develop a sense of hatred and envy towards Finny because he knew that Phineas was the best athlete of the school with no doubt ,and Gene wanted to be the top of the class in order to be even with him. It is because of the way Gene is feeling about Finny that he releases his feelings when he climbed the same tree with Finny for the second time. Gene decided to shake the branch of the tree and witnesses Phineas fall off the tree breaking his leg. At this point, Gene does not care about Phineas anymore and does not realize that he has ended Finny's athletic career. Another conflict Gene was involved in was when Brinker and his senior friends were trying to figure out what exactly happened the day Finny broke his leg. The fact that Gene never had the guts to tell Finny in his face that it was all his fault makes Gene look like a coward and an untrustworthy