A Separate Peace
Introduction Activities

1. Prewriting Activities:

 

Friendship is a strong motivating force during high school.  You probably have strong opinions about your criteria for friendship – the kinds of people you do or do not associate with.

1. What are the most important qualities you look for in a friend?

 

1. What type of things turn you off entirely?  People you won’t associate with?

1. What does loyalty have to do with friendship?

 

1. Is it harder to make a friend or keep a friend?

1. Friendships end because _____________________.

 

1. One of the themes of A Separate Peace involves envy between friends.

1. What are some causes of jealousy in your friendship?

 

1. Is envy a completely negative emotion, or could it possibly sometimes produce positive results?

1. Describe a personal war with a peer.

 

1. What caused the rivalry?

1. What were the effects of the conflict?

 

1. How was it resolved?

1. What did you learn?

 

1. The students at Devon are forced to deal with the subject of war; therefore, they are forced to deal with the opposite of war – peace.
2. What is your definition of peace?

1. How would you characterize world peace?

 

1. What would your own personal separate peace consist of?

1. Where does inner peace come from?

 

1. Are any of the elements of world peace and separate peace similar/

1. Discuss friendship and the following:

 

A. obligation     B. honesty     C. trust     D. loyalty     E. disappointment    F. individuality

A Separate Peace
Study Guide

Chapter 1
1. What two locations—which he describes as “fearful’—does the narrator visit? How does he describe each?
2. What is suggested by the tone of the opening section of the novel?
3. What is implied when the narrator considers “how far [his] convalescence had gone”?
4. Consider the narrator’s reflection that, “Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence.” What do all of the clues provided so far most likely suggest?
5. How do the weather and the time of year emphasize the mood of the opening section?
6. How is World War II introduced as a factor in the novel?
7. What is the significance of Finny’s name?
8. How do Gene’s and Finny’s walks back to the dormitory illustrate their respective characters?
9. How does Knowles emphasize the distance of the War from the lives of the boys in Devon?

 

 

 

Chapter 2
1. What is the primary purpose of this relatively short chapter?
2. What character trait of Finny’s “stun[s] people”?
3. What does Finny’s wearing a pink shirt indicate about his character?
4. What does Gene envy in Finny?
5. What is the structural and thematic significance of the final event of this chapter?
6. On what dramatic note does this chapter end?

Chapter 3
1. How has Gene’s sentiment from the end of the previous chapter changed by the beginning of this chapter?
2. How does the invention of Blitzball reflect on Finny?
3. What inner conflict is Knowles beginning to build for Gene?
4. Why does Finny refuse to let it be acknowledged that he broke the school’s swimming record?
5. What is Gene’s response to Finny’s calling him his best friend? What does this response indicate?

Chapter 4
1. What significant event occurs that begins to change the balance of Gene’s inner conflict?
How is this balance shifted?
2. How does Finny’s reaction to Gene’s failure contribute to Gene’s inner turmoil and the rising action of the novel?
3. What is the culmination of Gene’s growing hatred of Finny?

Chapter 5
1. Why does Gene put on Finny’s pink shirt?
2. Why does Knowles leave the issue of Gene’s intent in causing the fall ambiguous?
3. What revelation does Gene have in the hospital room?
4. What is the significance of Gene’s admission at the end of this chapter?

Chapter 6
1. How does this chapter introduce the second “half” of the novel?
2. What is the thematic significance of the hymn they sing at the Winter Session’s first chapel service?
3. What new feature of the Devon campus does Gene introduce in this chapter? What is Devon’s physical relationship with this feature?
4. Compare the Devon and the Naguamsett Rivers. What thematic purpose do they serve in the novel?
5. Why does Gene sign on as the assistant crew manager?
6. What is significant about the fight between Gene and Quackenbush?
7. Compare Gene and Quackenbush’s plunge into the Naguamsett River with the earlier jumping into the Devon River.
8. How does Quackenbush reflect Gene’s inner feelings?

Chapter 7
1. How is Brinker a foil for Leper? for Finny?
2. Explain the ambiguity of the early exchange between Brinker and Gene?
3. How do the boys in the Butt Room react to Brinker’s accusation?
4. What does Gene say is the reason he must play along and make up a story about his
attempt to murder Finny?
5. What is the purpose of the episode in the Butt Room? What new conflict is introduced?
6. In what ways does the War’s presence escalate? What is significant about the sequence of tasks?
7. How does Knowles use imagery and word choice to establish the new proximity of the war?
8. Why is enlisting suddenly such an appealing option for Gene?
9. What significant reversal occurs at the end of this chapter? How will it probably affect the plot as it has been developing?

Chapter 8
1. Describe Gene and Finny’s relationship in the opening of this chapter.
2. What convinces Gene to give up his idea of enlisting? How credible is his reason?
3. What is the significance of the wave imagery Gene uses when he describes the war? With what note of foreshadowing does the wave passage end?
4. Why does the absence of maids bother Finny so much?
5. How does Knowles create a poignant tone when he describes Finny’s return to the gym?
6. What two key psychological events take place in this gym setting? Why is this significant?
7. What does Finny mean when he says that he has “suffered”?
8. Why do Gene and Finny establish a partnership to train Gene for the 1944 Olympics?

Chapter 9
1. How does Gene inform the reader of Leper’s enlistment?
2. What impact does Leper’s leaving have on life at Devon? What does Gene say about this?
3. How does the imagery of the season emphasize the world the boys inhabit?
4. How is the Winter Carnival the highlight of the season?
5. How is the “separate peace” the boys achieve on the afternoon of the Winter Carnival different from the “peace” of the Summer Session?
6. What reversal ends the chapter and dispels the festive mood of the Carnival?

Chapter 10
1. How does Knowles maintain suspense about Leper in this chapter?
2. How is Leper changed from before he enlisted? What is Knowles most likely suggesting?
3. Given his newfound bluntness, what observation does Leper make of Gene? What does
this suggest?
4. What is Gene’s reaction? What does this suggest about Gene?
5. How close does Leper consider himself to be to Gene? How do you know?
6. Why does Gene react to Leper’s confidence the way he does?
7. Thematically, what has happened to Leper? How are he and Gene similar?

Chapter 11
1. Structurally, how does Knowles connect this chapter with previous ones?
2. What does the brief conversation between Gene and Finny after the snowball fight
foreshadow?
3. What is the significance of Finny’s saying, “Sure. There isn’t any war?”
4. How has Gene’s wave metaphor from Chapter 8 intensified?
5. How are the boys preparing for their involvement in the war? What does this suggest?
6. What event precipitates the climax? How do we know this is going to be the climax?
7. Who gives the testimony that condemns Gene?
8. On what note does this chapter end? How was this foreshadowed in the opening section of the novel?

Chapter 12
1. What is Gene’s initial role in Finny’s first aid? Why?
2. What happens when Gene goes to the infirmary to see Finny?
3. How does Gene try to console himself? How convincing are his attempts?
4. Why doesn’t Gene cry at Finny’s funeral? What does he mean when he says that he felt as if it were his own funeral?

Chapter 13
1. How has the war literally moved onto the Devon campus?
2. What is Gene suggesting when he says that he will talk about Finny in no other way than his death and Gene’s blame in it?
3. What ironic observation does Gene make while watching the troops and war machinery assemble on Devon’s campus? What does he probably mean by it?
4. What is suggested by Mr. Hadley’s reaction to Brinker’s decision to join the Coast Guard?
5. How does Gene plan to serve? Why has he made the decision he has?
6. What do Brinker’s and Gene’s decisions, when considered together, suggest about the graduating class of Devon?
7. What is Mr. Hadley’s attitude toward the war? What does Brinker’s reaction suggest?
8. What realization is Gene suggesting when he says, “wars are made…by something ignorant in the human heart”?
9. What is the significance of Gene’s reflection, “All others at some point found something in themselves pitted violently against something in the world around them. …When they began to feel that there was this overwhelmingly hostile thing in the world with them, then the simplicity and unity of their characters broke and they were not the same again”?
10. What was the “Maginot Line” that Gene refers to? What is the metaphoric significance of this reference?
11. How was Finny different? What does the final paragraph suggest is the theme of this
novel?

 

 

A Separate Peace
Poetry Response Selections

Into My Heart an
Air That Kills
by A. E. Housman
What experiences would you like to live over again? As you read this poem, think
about the speaker's feelings about the happy times of the past. How would you apply his insights to Gene's experiences?

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What arc those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

 

Destiny / Destino
by Rosario Castellanos translated by Magda Bodin
This poem is about the dark side of human nature-the destructive impulses that are sometimes unleashed. Consider
how the speaker's views might be applied to the relationships described in A Separate Peace.

We kill what we love. What's left
was never alive.
No one else is so close. What is forgotten, what is absent or less, hurts no one else.
We kill what we love. Enough of drawing a
choked breath
through someone else's lung! There is not air enough
for both of us. And the earth will not hold both our bodies
and our ration of hope is small and pain cannot be shared.

Man is an animal of solitudes, a deer that bleeds as it flees with an arrow in its side.

                 Ah, but hatred with its insomniac glass eyes; its attitude of menace and repose.

The deer goes to drink and a tiger is reflected in the water.
The deer drinks the water and the image.
And becomes
-before he is devoured-(accomplice,
fascinated) his enemy.

We give life only to what we hate.

 

Alba
by Derek Walcott
Besides the bleak events that haunt his memories of Devon, Gene also recalls several moments of glorious freedom and happiness. One of the most thrilling was seeing the sun rise, an experience described by the speaker of this poem.
The Spanish word alba, used as the title of this poem, means "white. "

Dawn breaking as I woke,
With the white sweat of the dew
On the green, new grass.
I walked in the cold, quiet as
If it were the world beginning;
Peeling and eating a chilled tangerine.
I may have many sorrows,
Dawn is not one of them.