The question is with whom- Finny or himself? Gene’s is more complicated, but he too makes a separate peace. Finny’s separate peace is the state of denial he lives in, refusing to admit that the world can be full of hostility. Devon provides it by keeping the war at bay, out of the lives of the students, despite on campus training of senior for combat. The underlying theme of war is present throughout this novel, but the main theme is the idea of a separate peace, a peace that is made separate and apart from the world at large. It is only later that Finny does become convinced of Gene’s culpability and the idea that this is so proves to be too much for him. Gene’s feelings of guilt cause him to confess to Finny that the fall was his fault, but Finny refuses to believe him. Out on the tree limb, Gene bounces it ever so slightly, but enough to cause Finny to fall and shatter his leg on the river bank. This time, though, Finny wants them to jump together. Even after Gene explains that he is aiming to be the best student of their year, Finny still manages to persuade him to come to the river for the ritual jump. Gene and Finny continue in this pattern behavior, with Finny proving his athletic ability and pulling Gene away from his studies, and Gene always giving in to Finny's demands and resenting it. But when Finny forms the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session with nightly mandatory meetings, Gene begins to suspect that Finny’s motives are to take him away from his studies and he begins to resent his roommate. The jumping becomes a ritual of the summer for Finny, Gene and a few other friends. One afternoon, after jumping out of a tree into the Devon River, Finny pushes the unwilling Gene into doing it also. That summer, their differences cause cracks in their facade of friendship.Īt school for an unprecedented summer term, due to the war, all school rules seem to fall by the wayside. Finny believes that people are innately good Gene believes people have ulterior motives. Finny is boisterous, impulsive, not a good student, but a great athlete. Gene is quiet, serious, intellectual, and not terribly athletic. Yet, they couldn’t have been more different. On the surface, they present a facade of being best friends, getting along so well, no one would suspect anything could ever be wrong. Gene has returned to his private prep school, The Devon School, 15 years after graduation and begins to recall his friendship with his roommate, Finny, beginning in the summer of 1942. I haven’t read this small novel since I was in the 10th grade, so it was interesting to reread it now, with oh so many more years of experience behind me, much like the narrator, Gene Forrester.

A separate peace online book