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.