Analysis Of The Novel 'A Separate Peace' By John Knowles

In John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, the chapter starts when Brinker Hadley, visits Gene in his room. Brinker teases Gene about having a room all by himself, “‘Here you are in your solitary splendor...I can see you have a real influence around here. This big room all to yourself”’(Knowles 87). Gene laughed about it all in the moment, but then realized that Brinker may be hinting that he purposely caused Finny to have his accident. A little while later in the basement where students all met to smoke, Brinker pushed Gene into a crowd of boys and just put it out there that he purposely tried to hurt Finny. Gene tried to come back with something funny and decided to ramble off a list of silly crimes he committed against Funny, but he did not
Gene does not know how to tell Finny about the tree accident, and to him telling anyone else would make the whole situation worse. If someone found out about the fall and actually had evidence that Gene was the culprit he would have no idea what to do. Knowles also uses a smile when describing everything that has gone on throughout the day, “...faded like that first snowfall of the winter”(Knowles 102). For Gene it was such a long day of people questioning him and how he may or may not have caused Gene to fall. He just wanted the day to be over and in the end it was over a lot quicker than he thought it would have been. Gene does not know what to do about the fact that now others are questioning him and Finny is back. Will Finny find out the really truth?
A theme that was apparent in this chapter was identity. Gene is trying to figure out how he is going to survive without Finny with him every second of the day. At the same time, he does not want to be around Finny because he is worried that he is going to find out that he intentionally pushed him. Gene is trying to get ahold of his feelings and navigate through his emotions and get enough courage to tell Finny what really