Summary Of John Knowles A Separate Peace

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…”proclaimed Emerson (370-372). John Knowles novel, A Separate Peace, takes place at Devon School of New Hampshire, 1942-1943. The narrator Gene is a conformist who questions his personal identity, which becomes lost in the envy of is best friend, Phineas. The mixed feelings of admiration and jealousy toward Finny are portrayed in the book. The novel, A Separate Peace, depicts how Gene’s envy and imitation affect himself, his friendship, and seizes his peace. Gene’s envy of Phineas takes a toll on his inner thought. His identity becomes lost in the process of trying to figure out Finny. Gene remarks, “And 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 a part of Phineas” (Knowles 85). Gene’s self-identity has vanished. He feels that he has no sole purpose other than to …show more content…
He thought his peace was brought into being by killing his enemy and best friend, but it was only a memory that stuck with him forever. Gene comments, “I did not cry then or ever about Finny…I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that sense” (Knowles 194). When Phineas dies, a peace of Gene parts as well. He never recovered from the death of his best friend, Finny. Gene’s peace only came when he was forced to interrupt Finny’s peace. “Nothing as he was growing up at home, nothing at Devon, nothing about the war had broken his harmonious and natural unity. So at last I had”, said Gene (Knowles 203). Finny’s peace, being his innocence and notion of no enemy, was crumpled by Gene’s selfishness in discovering his own peace. This leads to the death of Phineas and Gene’s adulating. The enemy within Gene’s self, caused his creation of Finny being the enemy, in which he must