What does Gene mean when he says “I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for 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 enemy there” (204). (Alex S)

Throughout the book Gene has this sort of competition with Finny and when Finny dies Gene has lost his competitor. Gene says, “I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his families strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston.

This funeral is thought out to be Genes funeral as well, Gene’s competitive side of him as been lost. When your enemy dies you don't have anything to do, Gene always wanted to match Finny but lost this fight factor in him, so when Finny dies this key part of Gene also dies. This competition is the war that he fights at devon, when Finny dies the war between them is over before he has the go to the real “war”

Assignment #12: What does Gene mean when he says “I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war end before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there” (204). Who/what is his enemy? Why does he contradict himself there? What was his war? (Sydonie)

In this part, Gene's "enemy" is Finny. From the beginning of the book, Gene never fully trusted him, or thought of him, as a true friend. He was always a rival or someone he just had to surpass/ be better than. A clear example of this is when Gene admits to Finny that he deliberately moved the branch so that he would fall. "I deliberately jounced the limb so you would fall off" (Knowles 70) Gene says, practically admitting at the moment he despised him. When he says "I killed my enemy there" he means that he killed Finny at the Devon school. This is contradictory because Finny and Gene had just become friends and after Finny's death, Gene thought of him as so much of a friend he was like a part of himself. Gene's war was his constantly changing, complicated, friendship with Finny. His entire Devon school experience felt like a war to him. After Finny dies in A Separate Peace a sense of peace is lost, but also some sort of peace is gained, one impactful enough to end an emotional war.

Assignment #12: Explore the implications and subtleties of the conversation with Mr. Hadley. What does he say about “manhood” (see what he says about the G.I.’s) and how does he feel about Brinker and Gene’s involvement in the war effort? (198-200). (Quinn)

During Mr. Hadley’s conversation, he brings up some essential points of being a man. He implies a lot in his discussion with the boys about what it’s like to be a man. Before the boys graduated, Devon rented out their Common quadrangle to the military for a parachute riggers’ school. After Mr. Hadley finds out that men are the ones at the school he says, “I can’t imagine any man in my time settling for duty on a sewing machine. I can’t picture that at all”(Knowles 198). After he continues with “But then times change, and wars change. But men don’t change, do they?”(Knowles 198). The two main subtleties in the quote are when he says “in my time” and “men don’t change.” What is subtle about what he is saying is that he believes that men shouldn't be settling for not fighting in combat and should be like the men of the past and that his definition of being a man shouldn't change through all of the generations. Mr. Hadley is not very fond of the boys’ decisions and believes they should in enlist in the G.I.’s because they would be serving in combat like real men. His comments make the boys feel bad about their decision to either enlist in the Coast Guard or wait for the draft, and they feel like lesser men, but they realize that they are smarter because they have seen what happened to Leper. When Brinker says, “the Coast Guard does some very rough stuff” (Knowles 199) he is justifying the Coast Guard’s involvement in the war as an attempt to make his dad feel better about his decision. After what Brinker says to his father (Mr. Hadley) it is clear that he does not worry about the boys coming back dead or damaged, but he does worry about them being ashamed that they didn’t serve on the frontlines with “some real shooting going on”(Knowles 199). Mr. Hadley believes that real men are required to serve on the frontlines and that the boys are wrong to enlist in the Coast Guard or wait for the draft.

Assignment #12: 4 Gene reflects on Phineas’ impact on his life at the bottom of page 202 and top of page 203. In this passage, what do you think Gene means when he says “Phineas alone had escaped this” (202)? What did he escape? And did he do so by dying or by the way he lived his life? (see also page 204) (Mike)

In the final chapter of A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, Gene thinks about Finny “escaping” the war meaning that he was too brave and cheering to be angry about it. After a tough conversation with Brinker’s dad about enlisting to the war, Gene reflects on Finny’s influence on his own life and comes to the realization that Finny actually escaped the war. Finny had always been a super lively person who seemed to never be upset about anything. Even after hearing about his best friend completely ruining his career, Finny still maintained his happy persona. Because of this, Gene says that his happiness made Finny escape from the war. “‘He possessed an extra vigor, a heightened confidence in himself, a serene capacity for affection which saved him. Nothing as he was growing up at home, nothing at Devon, nothing even about the war had broken his harmonious and natural unity’”(Knowles 203). Although Finny showed less of his joyful self towards the end of his life, Gene always remembered him for that. Knowles writes this to show that personality can mean a lot, and for Finny his personality was like his coping mechanism and he had tons of things pushing against him, but still managed to get by. Finny didn’t escape from war because of death, but by living his life with positivity and almost never looking at the bad side of life.

Assignment 11: Explain the significance of the last paragraph: "I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family's strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case." (Cordelia)

This last paragraph is significant because it demonstrates Gene’s blurred sense of identity. After the news of Finny’s death Gene does not cry, instead he feels a cold chill. Dry-eyed even at Finny’s funeral, Gene reflects on an inescapable feeling, “that [Finny’s funeral] was [his] own funeral, and [one] does not cry in that case” (Knowles, 194). As seen earlier in A Separate Peace Gene blurs his identity with Finny’s when he vows to become “part of Phineas” through sports. Gene also seeks comfort through Finny’s identity as seen when he wears Finny’s pink shirt “I was Phineas...I had no idea why this gave me such intense relief...that I would never stumble through the confusions of my own character again” (Knowles, 62). Gene’s sense of comfort while wearing Finny’s clothes may symbolize his desire to become like Finny -- happy and guilt free. And when Finny dies, a part of Gene dies along with him. This passage shows Gene’s tendency to blur his own identity to escape his pain.

Assignment #11: Explain the significance of the last paragraph: "I did not cry then or ever about Finny. I did not cry even when I stood watching him being lowered into his family's strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston. I could not escape a feeling that this was my own funeral, and you do not cry in that case." (Alisa)

FIRST, BEFORE THIS BLOG POST STARTS LET'S TAKE A MOMENT OF SILENCE TO HONOR PHINEAS. MAY HE REST IN PEACE.

The significance of the last paragraph is Gene finally realizes how close his relationship with Finny is and how in a way they existed as one entity at Devon. When Gene drops off Finny’s stuff at the infirmary, Finny tells Gene how he believes that Gene’s motives of jouncing the branch weren’t to hurt him but rather it was an impulse. Even though Gene and Finny both knew that Gene was the cause of Finny’s injury, Finny never wanted to think that Gene could do such a bad thing. Finny always trusted Gene even when Gene didn’t trust himself. The trust that Finny had towards Gene is what made him never really realizes how much he relied on him. When Finny is being carried away after falling on the stairs Gene realizes that “Phineas had thought of [Gene] as an extension of himself “ (Knowles 180). Throughout the beginning of the book, it seems that Gene is very reliant on Finny but towards the end, the tables turn.  Once Finny becomes injured he becomes reliant on Gene because he thinks he will be left by someone so capable like Gene. When Gene is walking home from sneaking out to the infirmary he has realized how much of himself wouldn’t exist without Finny and because of that, he feels like he is a ghost. He never truly embraced himself he just followed Finny so in that sense, at Devon Finny and Gene were like the same person. Until Finny got injured and Gene couldn’t be reliant on him, Gene’s true colors never showed to the other students at Devon.

Do you think that part of Gene still doesn’t regret jouncing the branch?

Assignment 11, question #3: Explain what Gene means when he says, "Phineas, you wouldn't be any good in the war, even if nothing had happened to your leg." Do you think this is true? Why? (Emma).

Gene tells Finny he “wouldn’t be any good in the war” even without his injury to make him feel better about his inability to fight. Since the first accident, Finny has been bitter about his injury and his inability to help in combat. He masks this hatred for his injury and it does not rise again until his second fall. When Finny begins ranting to Gene about his injury taking away his ability to go to war, Gene lies to Finny and says even without his injured leg he would be bad in the war. Gene says this to Finny to protect him from always resenting his injury and to help Finny make peace with his inability to fight. After Gene tells Finny about how much of a mess he would make out of the war Finny begins crying, “he was crying but trying to control himself. ‘It was just some kind of blind impulse you had in the tree there, you didn’t know what you were doing” (Knowles 191). Finny can see hard Gene is trying to make up for everything he took away from Finny the night in the tree. Finny and Gene hadn’t even talked about the incident because it was plainly too painful for both of them to relive that night. After Finny sees how hard Gene is trying to make up for his mistake, he finally heals and makes peace with Gene.