Rossiter's ASP Blog 2020

In A Separate Peace by John Knowles WWII is a prevalent topic for the boys attending the Devon school. It is often glorified, as the story is told through the eyes of Gene, a 17 year-old boy who is being conditioned to enlist or be drafted. When Gene receives a letter from Leper saying that he escaped and needs help Gene starts thinking of what he could have escaped from. He is convinced that Leper escaped from spies because the only enemies that would be in this country would be spies. He immediately rules out that Leper could have escaped from the army, saying “I accepted a hopeful interpretation. Leper had ‘escaped’. You didn’t ‘escape’ from the army, so it must have been something else.” (140).  His definition of escaping is literally getting away from an enemy or an opposing force. When he gets to Leper’s house, Leper explains that his escape was from getting a section 8 discharge from the army. Gene gets impatient and asks what Leper really escapes from. He doesn’t underst...

  There is real significance in the scene between Leper and Gene when Gene leaves Devon. After getting a Telegram from Leper telling Gene he “escaped”, Gene travels all the way to Vermont to see Leper. Gene thinks that Leper escaped from spies and other strange things but we find out that Leper escaped before he was “blacklisted” in a way and was going to be discharged due to mental issues. They began to fight and Leper said “ You always were a lord of the manor,weren’t you? A swell guy, except when the chips were down. You were always a savage underneath… I wasn’t thin king about you. Why the hell would I think about you? Did you ever think of me?...Like a savage underneath. Like, like that time you knocked Finny off the tree”(145). Immediately a rage came upon Gene,  and he kicked the chair Leper was sitting in. This statement is ironic because Leper could say this now wherever he went and no one would believe him because he’s crazy, but ...

Finny organizes the winter carnival to try and make it feel as though life has gone back to what it was in the summertime. He and Gene were naive and happy. Finny was great at sports, and he and Gene could play around all day. During this time, when Finny and Gene are walking back to the school, Gene thinks, “We were the best of friends at that moment...underfoot the healthy green turf was brushed with dew… we could see a faint green haze hanging above the grass, shot through with twilight sun.”(18) In this scene, Knowles portrays the Devon School as innocent. He uses the weather to show the student’s and teacher’s thoughts and feelings highlighting that they are naive about the war and reality. As Knowles changes the season to winter, students begin to enlist and teachers become stricter, while the weather becomes more dreary. Finny sees this and wishes he could go back to the summertime when life was easy and simple. He asks Gene to help him to make a carnival. This is significant b...

In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the winter carnival is significant. When Finny is dancing and enjoying the carnival, with his plans successfully being carried out, Gene describes the moment as an “afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace” (137). This moment is significant because Finny’s goal was likely to distract others from the worries of winter and the war. With everyone distracted, even for a short time, it brings Finny back to the feelings he had in the summer. To Finny and Gene, the summer was a time of innocence and freedom. Now, with the injury, those feelings are gone. The once-powerful and influential Finny is gone and was replaced with a new version of himself. The new Finny is not nearly as admired by others and cannot distract people from the world. Finny realized this when he got back to school, which is why the Carnival was an idea that appealed to him, and he saw would appeal to others. With the carnival, Finny is once again running...

In the novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles uses the war to push the plot forward but to also show character development and views. When Finny first hears about Gene thinking to enlist into the war, he acts naive and throws a little fit about not needing help in the shower. Further into the reading, Gene and Finny get into an argument about the war in the locker room and Finny says, “there isn’t any war” (115). Before that, Finny had only changed the subject when Gene tried to talk about the war, but once he says this, Gene is a little taken back. John Knowles does this to show how Finny has not changed from the beginning of the book despite his injury. Finny has not come to terms with the accident and how it could have possibly been Gene’s fault. On the other hand, Gene has started to look at life after Devon and outside the bubble of protection that Devon imposes on them. He almost enlisted into the war until he found out that Finny had come back to Devon. F...

In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, while Finny is out of school due to  his leg injury, Gene decides that he wants to enlist in the war.  When Finny finds this out  he becomes very irritated with Gene and exclaims, “‘Enlist!’ Cried Finny at the same time.   His large and clear eyes turned with an odd expression on me.  I had never seen such a look  on the before.’” (107) Without the ability to play sports, Finny feels lost in his life and is  jealous that Gene can go to the war.  When Gene realizes this he responds to Finny telling him  it was just a crazy idea anyway, and even shames Brinker to make Finny feel better:  “Enlist! What a nutty idea.  It’s just Brinker wanting to get there first again.  I wouldn’t  enlist with you if you were General MacArthur’s eldest son.”(108) With this new dynamic  in Finny and Genes' relationship, Gene is compromising his wants and needs to make F...

In this reading in A Separate Peace , Leper is used to represent the innocence and freedom before the impending war. While the rest of his class worked on the railroads to help trains filled with soldiers, Leper traveled around to find a beaver dam. Leper doesn’t seem to have the war and his dangerous future on his radar, he is just enjoying his days in his sheltered environment. Brinker Hadley, on the other hand, represents what Gene and the rest of his class’s life will be like once they graduate from Devon or decide to enlist. Brinker only focuses on what will happen when they leave Devon instead of focusing on his numbered days left at the school. These opposing personalities show the extreme approaches of coming to terms with being drafted. Leper’s way of dealing with the outside circumstances irritates and even offends Brinker Hadley as “‘That’s the kind of place I’m in with a world war going on. A school for photographers of beaver dams.’” (99) This reading taught us Leper’s w...

In the novel A Separate Peace , John Knowles uses the unreliable first person point of view to show us how Gene often overreacts to certain situations. After Gene had an altercation with  Quackenbush and was pushed into the Naguamsett he returned to his room to clean himself.  B rinker Hadley, an outgoing and likeable young man enters Gene’s room and congratulates  him on having his room all to himself, with suspicion. Brinker goes on to accuse Gene of  Phineas’s injury in a playful manner, ‘“I’ll bet you knew all the time Finny wouldn’t be back  this fall. That’s why you picked him for a roommate, right?’” then Gene tries to deny it and  Brinker goes on to say, ‘“Ah-h-h. The truth hurts, eh?’” (88) While Brinker’s claim is false, it does force Gene to get into his own head and think about whether he purposefully hurt  Phineas or not. It unnerves him and makes him paranoid that everyone must now suspect  him of hurting Phineas. Gene i...

3) Why does Quackenbush use the word “maimed”? Explore the significance and connotation. In the novel A Separate Place, the author John Knowles perfectly incorporated the setting of the book into the dialog between the characters. After Gene walks into the crew house late for the assistance manager position the manager of the crew team, Quackenbush, sparks an argument with Gene which ends in a brawl after Quackenbush calls Gene maimed for not playing any sports." 'Listen you maimed son-of-a-bitch...' I hit him hard across the face."(79) In this moment Quackenbush struck a flame in Gene by making him think of how Gene basically maimed finny, "It was almost as though I were maimed. Then the realization that there was someone who was flashed over me."(79) Quackenbush using the word maimed could also be John Knowles reminding the reader of the book's setting in World War II. With all the violence that a war contains, death and injuries are known outcomes ...

4.) Re-read the last sentence of chapter 6 (p84-85). Explain what is happening in the quote (establish context)  and then explore and explain the last part “I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom  revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become part of Phineas” (85). In the book A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles uses Gene's guilt of hurting Finny as a way to make  Finny control Gene. When the master Mr. Ludsbury tells Gene there is a call for him in his study, he is  surprised to see it is from Finny. They small talk for a bit until Finny says, "'Listen pal, if I can't play sports,  you're  going to play them for me,'" when then Gene reflects this, "and I've lost part of myself to him then, and  a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of  Phineas"(Knowles 85). There is two levels to this thought: One is that Gen...

Explore the significance of the fight with Quackenbush. Why does it happen? What exactly sets Gene off? How is related to his narrative earlier in the chapter? Why might Quakenbush be so disdainful of Gene? In A Separate Peac e, by John Knowles, Gene starts working as assistant crew manager at Devon at the start of the year. Gene is late to his athletics and so the crew manager, Quackenbush is furious with him. As Gene starts to work, Quackenbush heckles him and and gives him a hard time about his unathletic abilities. As Quackenbush aggravates Gene, Gene says, “You, Quackenbush, don’t know anything about who I am. Listen you maimed son-of-a-bitch...I hit him hard across the face. I didn’t know why for an instant; it was almost as though I were maimed. Then the realization that there was someone who was flashed over me” (79).  Since, Quackenbush repeatedly says “maimed” to Gene, he becomes paranoid and worried that he might know the truth about what happened at the tree. After...

In the book A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles, uses Gene and Finny's summer time activities and summertime endings, as a symbol for their relationship together. Soon after Finny had been sent back home because of his tree injury, Gene says that, “The Summer Sessions closed, officially came to an end. But to me, it seemed irresolutely suspended” (Knowles 67). Later into the summer, Gene took a trip to go and see Finny. When they met, Gene told Finny he believed he was the reason Finny fell from the tree. When he told Finny this, he said that Finny, “looked older than I had ever seen him before” (Knowles 70). Knowles was very intentional in that passage, to let the reader know something had changed in Finny. Although not for sure, their relationship will probably be completely changed, if not ended, because of Gene’s confession. This continues the pattern of their relationship shadowing the summer. Like how they were a good summer, but at the same time, there ...

3.) When Stanhope tells Gene about Finny, he cries. Why does he do this? What does this reveal about him?  Explore the passage in the middle of page 64 to inform your answer. In the novel A Separate Peace John Knowles in chapter 5 explores when Gene enters the infirmary but before that Dr. Stanhope tells Gene that Finny won’t be able to play sports ever again. At this point Gene starts to cry. One of the reasons that he cries is that he’s mad at himself for causing the tree incident to happen. But I also think that he’s crying because he cares so much about Finny. Throughout the whole book the theme of friendship is explored between Finny and Gene. This is another example of how much they care about each other. I think that this reveals that Gene cares too much about Finny and Finny cares too much about Gene to let the friendship go which is why when Gene went to tell Finny the truth neither of them could have ended the friendship.  On page 64 Gene says “ ...

Why did Gene go to Finny’s house? How did it impact Finny? Did Gene try to do the right thing? Why or why not? What would you have done?   In A Separate Peace , Gene visits Finny's house before heading back to Devons for the start of school. Gene does this because he has been living with guilt about the tree incident. He tries to come clean to Finny but it comes out in the wrong way. Finny, in disbelief, tells Gene, “Of course you didn't do it. You damn fool. Sit down you damn fool”(70) and, “I’ll kill you if you don’t shut up”(70). But it is how Gene r esponds that forces Finny to say, “... Go away. I’m tired and you make me sick. Go away”(70).  Gene had the right intentions to go to Finny’s house and tell him the truth. He tried to do the right thing however, it hurt their friendship even more. Gene had done the right thing up until the part where Finny told him to “sit down”(70). His response was too abrupt and he was not understanding of the fact that Fin...

Why does Gene’s “fear” disappear at the end of the chapter? What was the fear? How is it connected to what happened in the tree? - Fahy At the end of Chapter 4 of the novel, Gene and Phineas are about to jump off the tree. Right when they were about to jump, “Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening unnatural thud. It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him make. With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten”(60). Gene has always thought Finny could do anything. He was afraid to jump out of the tree not just because it was high up and scary, but because Finny could do it so easily. Throughout the novel, Gene describes Finny as a perfect person who can do whatever he wants. Gene describes the fall as “the first clumsy physical action I h...