A Separate Peace Notes Mr. Antey

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1 A Separate Peace Notes Mr. Antey I. Chapter 1 A. Setting: 1. School in New a) Private, school for wealthy b) A with many buildings c) Some students live there all year long 2. of 15 years from a) Includes the Summer and Winter b) Summer of 1942 B. Characters 1. Forrester: narrator a) 16 years old during b) Uses sarcasm to cover his c) Follows Finny and is his friend 2. ( Finny ) a) the best in school b), outgoing, persuasive c) A boy who was most comfortable in the truant s corner 3. Elwin Lepellier ( ) a) Nervous,, timid b) A year older than the rest of the Upper C. Key Events 1. Gene visits his old school 15 years later 2. He visits the steps and the FLASHBACK 3. challenges the boys to jump from the tree 4. are the only two to jump; best friends at that moment 5. Finny causes them to be late for. II. Chapter 2 1. Finny tells Mr. they were late because they were getting ready for the war. 2. Finny puts on the pink shirt as an. 3. Gene thinks Finny will get in trouble for wearing the school tie as a belt to Mr. house, but Mr. P.W. laughs instead. 4. The boys establish the Super Society of the Summer Session. 5. Gene says Finny practically my life when he kept him form falling from the tree. B. Characters: 1. Mr. Prud homme: teacher for the Summer; tries to enforce the rules, but not able to do so. 2. Mr. Patch-Withers: substitute ; laughs at Finny s response to why he wore the school tie as a belt C. Important passages 1. This was the way the tended to treat us that Summer. They seemed to be modifying their usual attitude of chronic. (p23)

2 2. We reminded them of what was like, of lives which were not bound up by. (p24) 3. Bombs in Central were completely unreal to us here (p30) This is the Separate Peace III. Chapter 3 1. Finny creates the game, which is symbolic of war. The game brought out his own athletic gifts. 2. Finny breaks the record, but makes Gene promise not to tell anyone. 3. Gene and Finny sneak off to the and spend the night there. 4. Finny calls Gene his best, but Gene cannot return this. 1. Chapter opens with Yes, he had practically saved my life. He had also practically it for me. PARADOX 2. Finny s life was ruled by inspiration and, and so he prized a set of rules. his own rules 3. Gene says that his moment in was the war. This moment lasted four years. IV. Chapter 4 1. They get back to school late and flunks his first test ever. 2. Finny tells Gene that he works too hard, and that he has to Gene s time for him. 3. Finny convinces Gene to go watch jump from the tree instead of studying. They decide to do a double jump and Finny falls on the bank. B. Important passages 1. Gene decides that Finny has deliberately set out to wreck [his]. (p53) 2. Gene starts working hard and says I was more and more certainly becoming the best student in the school; Phineas was without question the best, so in that way we were even. (p55) V. Chapter 5 1. Gene puts on Finny s and becomes Finny. 2. The says that sports are finished for Finny. 3. Gene talks to Finny for the first time since the accident and struggles to say that he tried to Finny to keep him from falling. 4. The Summer Session ends and Gene goes to visit Finny at his house where he tells him he caused the accident and jounced the limb so [Finny] would fall off. gets angry and says, I ll kill you if you don t shut up!! 1. it was especially that it should strike one of the sixteen-year-olds, one of the few young men who could be and happy in the summer of Finny asks Gene if he is going to start living by the, and Gene responds, Oh no, I wouldn t do that, which was the biggest of all.

3 V. Chapter 6 1. The Winter Session begins and takes away the summer spirit. 2. Gene is late for crew and has a confrontation with, the crew manager. He hits him in the face and they fall into the water. 3. Finny tells Gene that since he cannot play sports that Gene is going to play them for him, and being assistant manager is not good enough. 1. Gene says that If you broke the, then they broke you. (p74) 2. Gene resents Quackenbush because he knew nothing of the summer, nothing of the loss I was fighting to endure VI. Chapter 7 1. Brinker jokingly accuses of purposely hurting Finny so he could have the room to himself. 2. Gene tries to make the accusation seem like a joke in the Room, but struggles to tell the lie. 3. Leper goes skiing in the countryside and finds the dam to show his love for nature. 4. The boys go to work on digging snow for the. This is their contribution to the effort. 5. declares that he will enlist, just before Finny returns. 1. They were not much older than we were and although probably just, they gave the impression of being elite we seemed to be nothing but children playing among men. 2. Why go through the motions of getting an education and watch the war slowly chip away at the one thing I loved here, the of the Devon Summer? VIII. Chapter 8 1. Brinker storms into the room and asks Gene if he is ready to. Finny cannot believe that his friend might be joining the army. 2. Finny voices his opinion that there isn t any. He claims that the men have made it up. This is his attempt to cling to the separate peace that he enjoys from the world around him. 3. Finny says that he used to be aiming for the. He makes the decision to train Gene for the Olympics instead.

4 4. As Gene starts to train, he begins to realize that he is capable of things he had never imagined. He realizes that he was just before. B. Important passages 1. was shocked at the idea of my leaving. In some way he needed me I was the least person he had ever met. I knew that; he knew or should know that too. 2. Finny says, when you really love, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love. 3. Finny says, the whole world is on a Farm now. But it s only the fat old men who get the joke. Gene asks him what makes him so special that he knows, and Finny responds, Because I ve. IX. Chapter 9 1. Leper Lepellier enlists after seeing the of the soldiers skiing, showing a recognizable and face to the war. This gave a false appearance of the reality of war to these young men. 2. Finny organizes the Winter in an attempt to escape the reality of the war. They play games, drink cider, and enjoy their peace away from the war. 3. This peace is broken when they receive the telegram from Leper that says he from the army. 1. This was not shaken even by the enlistment of Leper Lepellier. In fact that made the war seem more than ever. No real war could draw Leper away from his snails and beaver dams. 2. [The Winter Carnival] was this we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary,, special and separate peace. X. Chapter Gene visits Leper at his home where Leper says that he is. 2. Leper says that Gene was a underneath and that he crippled [Finny] for life. Gene got mad and kicked him out of his chair. 3. Leper describes the horrors of war when he saw visions of limbs and heads cut off and changing into strange images. shows the harsh of war 1. Most of us, so it was estimated, would be killed. But the men a little bit older closed in on the enemy faster than predicted, and then there was the final holocaust of the. It seemed to have saved our lives. 2. seized my stomach like a cramp. I didn t care what I said to him now; it was myself I was worried about. For if Leper was psycho it was the which had done it to him, and I and all of us were on the of the army.

5 3. What did he mean telling me a story like that! I didn t want to hear any more of it. Not now or ever. I didn t care because it had nothing to do with XI. Chapter Gene mentions the pictures he hangs on his wall that showed his false, an attempt to be something that he was not. But by now I no longer needed this vivid false identity; now I was acquiring a sense of my own real and worth. 2. Brinker confronts Gene and tells him that Finny is a and they should not pity him. 3. Finny tells Gene that he knows the war is real now after hearing about. all signs of the separate peace from the war are now gone 4. puts Finny on trial. Finny and Gene both tell lies to avoid facing the truth of the event in the tree. Their lie is shattered by describing the event. 1. That s what it was like, if you want to know. The two of them looked as black as as black as standing up there with the fire burning all around them. powerful IMAGERY of the tree incident XII. Chapter When Gene first sees Finny after he falls down the stairs, yells at him and falls out of the bed onto the floor in despair. 2. Gene spends that night in the, in an attempt to escape the memory of his injured roommate. 3. Finny tells Gene that he has been secretly all branches of the military in an attempt to join the war effort. I ll hate it everywhere if I m not in this war! Why do you think I kept saying there wasn t any war all winter? 4. Dr. tells Gene that has died, saying, This is something that I think boys of your are going to see a lot of. 1. We members of the class of 1943 were moving very fast toward the war now, so fast that there were even before we reached it, a mind was clouded and a leg was broken maybe these should be thought of as minor and inevitable mishaps in the accelerating rush. The air around us was filled with much worse things. 2. Finny tells Gene in their last conversation, Something just seized you. It wasn t anything you really felt against me, it wasn t some kind of hate you ve felt all along. It wasn t anything. 3. I did not cry then or ever about. I did not cry even when I stood watching him lowered into his family s strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a felling that this was my own, and you do not cry in that case. XIII. Chapter 13

6 1. The war has finally entered Devon with the appearance of and sewing machines for the Riggers. separate peace is gone 2. Gene and Brinker talk to Brinker s father, Mr. Hadley, who tells them, times change, and wars change. But men don t change, do they? You boys are the of me and my gang in the old days. It does me good to see you. 3. Brinker says to Gene, I m going to as he puts it, I may even get killed. But I ll be damned if I ll have that attitude of his about it I m not any kind of hero, and neither are you. And neither is the old man, he never was 1. Gene says that it seemed clear that wars were not made by and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something in the human heart. 2. I never killed any body and I never developed an intense hatred of the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my there.--fear

I am looking forward to getting to know you and engage in interesting and intelligent literary discourse over the course of this year.

Mrs. Rosenberg English 11 A Separate Peace Welcome to 11 th grade English! I am looking forward to getting to know you and engage in interesting and intelligent literary discourse over the course of this