A Separate Peace

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Summary: A Seperate Peace
Review: A Seperate Peace Review- by Andy Sexton
I just finished reading the book A Separate Peace and I really enjoyed it. First, the characters in this story have more to them than they show and some of them, we can even relate to. Finny, the main character's best friend, has a carefree attitude, but inside he feels isolated from everyone because of his injury. Gene, the main character, acts like Finny's friend (which he is), but deep inside he feels there is a fierce rivalry between them. The setting is in the New England states in the mid-1900's. Gene, a good scholar, goes to a school called Devon and has a best friend named Finny, who is a great athlete. They both have fun together but Gene begins to think that Finny is distracting him from focusing on his grades. Gene begins to sense a rivalry. Gene and Finny one day walk down to a tree near campus and decide to jump out of it into the river below. They both climb up the tree and decide to do a double jump. When they get up there, Finny walks to the edge of the tree's limb and urges Gene to come. Gene then shakes the limb, making Finny fall out of the tree onto the hard ground below. This is where the main part of the story begins. I enjoyed nearly everything about this book, except at some parts it seemed to slow down. The characters are great, the plot is interesting, and the theme makes you think. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys stories that involve friendship, betrayal, and symbolism.

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Summary: a seperate peace review
Review: I thought A Seperate Peace was a pretty good book. It is about a boy named Gene, that goes to a boarding school in New England. At the school he has a friend named Phineas, but they call him Finny. All through the story, Gene thinks that Finny is trying sabotage his grades. The story is set during World War Two, so the denior class at Devon, (the school that they go to) has to jump out of a tree, into the Devon river, as part of their training for the war. One day while they were beside the river, Finny thinks that it would be fun to jump in the river out of the tree. So he, Gene, and a couple of other people do it also. Going back to the "Finny is trying to sabotage Gene's grade so he will do bad, and won't be as good as Finny" idea, one day while they are near the river, Finny wants to do a double jump with Gene. While they are up in the tree, Gene jounces the limb on a blind impulse and makes Finny fall, and land on the bank, and break his leg. Because of the break, Finny will no longer be able to play sports. In the weeks following, Finny has to stay home. When Finny gets back, some of the boys get the idea that Gene actually ment to push Finny out of the tree. One night the boys come and get Finny and Gene out of their room, and go have a trial in the auditorium. They find out that Gene actually made Finny out of the tree. (They thought before that Finny just lost his balance.) When Finny finds out what really happened, he runs down the stairs, falls, and breaks his leg again. When doctor Stanpole is trying to set the break, some bone marrow escapes, goes to Finny's heart, and kills him. That is basically the end of the story, except fo r what gene says about the funeral. I think the author did a good job on the book. It was pretty interesting to me, but some of the characters were kind of weird. The main theme in the book was the jouney from innocence to experince.

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Summary: A Separate Peace--Review
Review: Gene Forrester is a good boy and a very bright student, who is from the south and attends the Devon School in New Hampshire. In the summer of 1942, he becomes very close friends with his roommate Phineas. They are almost complete opposites. Gene is very smart, quiet guy and Finny is the school's best athlete. Often finny gets into trouble, but is almost always able to talk his way out of it with innocent explanations of why he was making mischief. During the summer session of 1942 at Devon, Finny creates a club and they decide to call it the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session. The initiation to this club is to make a jump from a tree and into the Devon River that it hangs over.
Gene begins to suspect Finny of being jealous of him. He thinks that Finny is trying to sabotage his grades because he doesn't want Gene to be the head of the class. Gene thinks that if he becomes head of class, then he and Finny will be equal. This feeling of hatred toward Finny never gets expressed and it builds up inside of Gene and he can't control it. Finny asks Gene to go with him and see Leper jump from the tree. Gene tells Finny that he needs to study, but Finny just presses on. Gene tells him that he has to study and Finny says that he didn't realize that Gene had to study for his grades. At this Finny leaves him alone. Gene then realizes that there never could have been any competition between he and Finny because Finny is too good. When Gene realizes this he decides to go jump with Finny to try to make up for it. They get to the tree before any of the other boys do, and Finny decides to do something that hasn't been done before. He and Gene will make a double jump. As Finny edges toward the end of the limb, Gene is a few feet away from Finny and on the limb also, just closer to the trunk. Before Gene can think, his knees bend and the branch goes down and causes Finny to lose his balance. Finny falls through all of the small branches and hits the bank with a thud. He is immediately taken to the doctor. Finny has broken his leg and won't ever be able to play sports again.
When Leper leaves for the army all the boys begin to realize that the war is more real than ever and it keeps moving closer.
When Finny is able to come back to school in the winter the other boys hold a trial for Gene because they have become suspicious that Finny didn't just fall. Finny attends the trial also, and when he sees that Gene did it on purpose, even though it was done unconsciously, he can't take it. He goes out of the room as fast as he can and slips and falls down the stairs. This fall breaks his leg again. When the doctor tries to reset it, a piece of bone marrow goes into Finny's heart and kills him.
Gene realizes that you don't usually have another person as an enemy. It's not the guy across the field that you are shooting at. Your biggest enemy is yourself. He realizes that evil comes from somewhere in the human heart.
I liked about A Separate Peace is how the author made it an escape novel, but still had some elements of interpretive stories. For example, the bone marrow that goes into Finny's heart and kills him signifies that shock and destruction that he felt when he found out that Gene intentionally made him lose his balance. Finny's fall signifies Gene's fall from innocence into experience. The war motif keeps coming up also. The author describes the tree as an artillery piece and there are other examples show this theme.
In this novel, Gene is the protagonist and the narrator. He is smart and generally a good guy, but he realizes that he is also a savage at times. Finny is an athletic, free spirited boy who is too good for the war and the world. He is the only one in the novel who never shows any evil. He is idealistic and is only interested in playing for the love of it, not for the competition and victory. Leper is nature loving and very peaceful. Leper is the first in their class to go to war and he goes insane. This fact throws the boys into manhood because they know that their time is coming soon also. Brinker is kind of the class politician. He has to have all of the facts. He doesn't understand that it hurt Finny more to know that Gene injured him on purpose.
I think that the author should have showed a little bit more information on Gene's later life. I don't think that Knowles should have had Leper go insane. I think that he should have had Leper become missing in action and have the boys hear about it. I think that it would make the fact that the war is evil and upon them more apparent.

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Summary: Seperate Peace
Review: Separate Peace
By: Chris Qualheim
October 5th, 2001
English/ Mr. Powell
9th grade/ Brookwood School

I found that in reading A Separate Peace that I did not know as much about what the kids would go through before they knew they were going to have to go off to war to fight for there country. I think that John Knowles did a magnificant job in writing this novel. Over the summer I would enjoy lying down and opening this book every time. One of the main reasons I liked this book is because it had lots of adventure for a war book. For example, when Gene jounces the limb and makes Finny fall out of the tree. It stirs up a big conflict that eventually ends in death. Another example of the adventure I liked was when Gene and Quakenbush get into their fight and they fall into the Nagaumset River and Gene says that he has just had a reverse baptism. Another reason why I enjoyed this book was because it pointed out to me that there is good and evil inside of everyone and that the evil comes from jealousy and hatred and envy that is buried deep inside the heart. Finally the last reason why I liked this book was because it shows that true friends can forgive each other and push the hatred and envy aside and just let it be. For example everyone is telling Finny that Gene purposely jounced the limb, but Finny has it set in his mind that Gene did not jounce the limb purposely and that he must have just lost his balance. Even when Gene tells Finny to his face that he jounced the limb Finny doesn't even believe Gene. So it goes to show that Finny is a true friend to Gene and he can forgive him for his mistake. So that is why I liked the book so much.

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Summary: Thoughts on this novel from a high schooler's point of view
Review: The novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a great story about friendship in a time of war. The setting is a boarding school for boys in New Hampshire named Devon. The two main characters, Gene and Finny, are enjoying a summer and then school year of innocence, while the rest of the country is off at war against Germany, Japan, and Italy (World War II). However, a different kind of war creeps silently into Devon when Gene becomes jealous of Finny, his best friend, and wrongfully suspects him of deliberately wrecking his grades. Finally, after an epiphany, Gene comes to the truth about how Finny is just too good a person, and the battle was all in Gene's head. That night, the boys are making a midnight jump from a mammoth tree near the river, when Gene subconsciously "jounces" the limb causing Finny to fall and shatter his leg. This is the end of Finny's brilliant athletic career. The remainder of the story discusses Gene's inner examination of his evil heart and his becoming more mature as he takes responsibility for his actions.
All of the characters in the story are extremely plausible and well rounded. Gene especially, has mental battles with his evil heart and spends much of his free time pondering Finny's motives. Finny is a very idealistic character with a kind heart and innocent mind. Indirectly, this innocence leads to his death, as he wasn't able to survive the "war". The theme can be interpreted many ways but all are very complex and involve the loss of innocence and the potential for evil in the human heart. The greatest battles against evil are those fought in the human mind.
I felt that this story moved at a moderate pace, although some parts were bogged down with description. There is a great deal of symbolism in this story concerning a war motif and a Garden of Eden motif. This is a good story on its own, but is much more interesting and puzzling when read between the lines when you take the symbolism into account.
John Knowles did an excellent job on this novel, but I felt that one thing could be changed. The epilogue summarizes the remainder of Gene's life and war experiences in only a few sentences. This could have been explored further.

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Summary: very good book if you understand it
Review: I had to read this book last year for English (10th grade) and i had a very good teacher and she explained all the allusions and symbolism and it's just so cool how much stuff you can find in there! I think that if I would have read the book on my own i wouldn't have liked it as much as i did. I recoment this book for anyone, but if you're my age and want to read it on your own, i suggest you stop every once in a while and think about the things the characters are feeling and going through and the things aroudn them, like the school, and descriptions. In this book, if Knowles spends some time describing something, that means that it is important to the book.
bottom line: READ THIS BOOK!

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Summary: Phenominal Writing
Review: I read "A Separate Peace" in high school. This book carries many life lessons we could all relate to. The writings of knowles create an imagery unsurpassed by any author writing a precise story of it's kind. The novel is so short and such an easy read. Yet, when I read it again and again, I still find that there is more to experience. Males and females especially should experience this novel integrating the truest of friendships with the backdrop of war. Finny is the guy we hate to love yet always do, and Gene is the nice guy with feelings unimagineable.

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Summary: The evils of youth
Review: Like William Gerald Goling or J.D. Salinger, John Knowles has used mere boys to explore serious themes in this classic novel. Gene, an isolated honor student forges a friendship with his roomate, the sly, charismatic Phineas. Although they are very different, a rivalry and subconscious spite developes between the boys until a boiling point reaches in Gene, causing an action he will be analyzing for the rest of his life. The backdrop of WWII America is perfect for a book which so subtely explores the themes of evil, jealousy and guilt.

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Summary: A Classic that will live on forever
Review: The first time I read A Separate Peace, I loved it. Now that I've read it for a second time, I understand it. Through the escapades of Gene and Finny, Knowles shows the hope, fear, uncertainty, and jealousy that is adolescence. I know I truly love a book if I fall in love with the main character, and fall in love with Finny I did. Knowles created a character so real, so vivid and so wonderful, I would wonder if anyone didn't love him. Nestled amongst the beautiful prose and realistic dialogue rests a story that cuts straight to the core--a story of friendship, pain, and growing up.

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Summary: A Favorite
Review: I read this book initailly because it took place very near to my home. I was so glad that I did read it. This book is deeper than a friendship between 2 friends. It is a story of adolecents growing up and not knowing what may come next, also being scared of what may come.