Separate Peace Theme

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The message of John Knowles A Separate Peace is to find a peace within yourself, and in their time at Devon many of the boys found this peace through romanticism of reality; they chose to cover reality with a cloud of delusion and dreaming up fantasies to avoid the truth. This theory is mainly shown through the three main characters: Gene, Finny, and Leper. By pretending lies were the truth, each boy created an additional battle by pretending the real one didn’t exist: “All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier.” (Knowles, 111). The boys of Devon were both reluctant and unprepared for their disillusionment regarding the world, …show more content…
As the protagonist of this novel, Gene struggles with coming to accept the truth about himself, the war, and his relationship with Finny. Gene, unlike many of the other characters, is only mildly intimidated by the war. Gene determines, “What deceived me was my own happiness; for peace is indivisible, and the surrounding world confusion found no reflection inside me. So I ceased to have any real sense of it.” (Knowles, 65). He realizes that the war has no effect on him and that peace can never be destroyed because it is separate from everything else. Gene devises a fantasy in which the world revolves around him, and if the war does not involve or directly impact him, then it is not worth believing in. Gene also fabricates a chimerical reality by characterizing Finny as his enemy. When Finny refers to Gene as his “best pal”, Gene “was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.” …show more content…
Unlike Gene, Finny does not create a rivalry; he instead focuses on the war, his physical impairments, and triumphing over others in sports. Before Finny’s accident his only shortcoming is academics. In an attempt to make his grades appear more imposing compared to Gene’s, Finny distracts Gene by creating diversions such as the Super Suicide Society Squad of the Summer Session, going to the beach, blitzball, and skipping class. However, after his fall, Finny invents other fantasies to make his reality seem less daunting. His biggest regret is that he is no longer fit to play sports. Instead, he orders Gene, “Leave your fantasy life out of this. We’re grooming you for the Olympics, pal, in 1944.” (Knowles, 62). It seems Finny believes training Gene is like training himself, and that Gene playing for him makes up for Finny not being able to play himself. A similar fantasy is drawn with the Winter Carnival, which Finny creates to avoid discussion of the war. Most significantly though, Finny theorizes that the war is devised by ““The fat old men who don’t want us crowding them out of their jobs. They’ve made it all up“ (Knowles, 61). He imagines this concept to ignore the reality that because of his leg, he can never serve. Finny uses fantasy to try to give him a sense of comfort and shelter him from the truth, as he does with other insecurities in his
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