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	D-Day (Discussion Day): A Separate Peace

	D-Day is a term often used in military jargon to denote the day on which a combat attack or operation is to be initiated. Many military invasions and operations have had a D-Day. One of the most famous D-Days is June 6, 1944 — the beginning of the Battle of Normandy — which began the Western Allied effort to liberate mainland Europe from Nazi occupation during World War II. John Knowles’ A Separate Peace takes place during WWII—hence my crazy desire to title this our D-Day activity. We are going to “attack” the text in hopes of finding the deeper meanings behind the characters and events of the work.

1.	Re-read the first four paragraphs of the novel, how many times does the narrator mention the word fear? Now that you’ve read the novel, what do you think it was that Gene feared? What factors might have contributed to this fear? What allowed Gene to make his “escape from it”?

2.	What do you think Gene means when he says, “Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence.”? To which death might he be referring—the death of Finny, the death of his fear, the death of his innocence, etc.? Explain. (page 4)

3.	At the beginning of Chapter 3 Gene states: Yes, he had practically saved my life. He had also practically lost it for me. I wouldn’t have been on that limb except for him. I wouldn’t have turned around, and so lost my balance, if he hadn’t been there. I didn’t need to feel any tremendous rush of gratitude toward Phineas (16). Why do you think Finny says these words? What do you think they reveal about his character (the kind of person he is)?

4.	In the midst of creating the game of Blitzball, Finny states, “There aren’t any teams in blitzball…we’re all enemies. Since we’re all enemies, we can and will turn on each other all the time” (19). When Gene is reflecting on Finny’s request that he remain silent about Finny’s breaking of one of the school swimming records, he states, “To keep silent about this amazing happening deepened the shock for me. It made Finny seem too unusual for—not friendship, but too unusual for rivalry. And there were few relationships among us at Devon not based on rivalry” (23). How are these words in these two passages reflective of life for the boys on the Devon campus? How are these words allegorical? In other words, how are these words both literal and symbolic, and how does Knowles use them to make either a moral, political, or religious point?

5.	The following passage is spoken by the narrator, Gene, after Finny tells him “you can’t come to the shore with just anybody and you can’t come by yourself, and at this teen-age period in life the proper person is your best pal…which is what you are” (25): It was a courageous thing to say. Exposing a sincere emotion nakedly like that at the Devon School was the next thing to suicide. I should have told him then that he was my best friend also and rounded off what he had said. I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling deeper than thought, which contains the truth (25). How does this passage spoken by Gene relate to the passages in Question 4? Why do you think Gene did not reciprocate Finny’s token of friendship? What do you think was the “something” that held him back? What was the “level of feeling deeper than thought, which contains the truth”?

6.	Re-read pages 27 through “We were even after all, even in enmity. The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all” (29). Throughout theses pages the words even, envy, and enmity pop up. How does the discussion between Gene and Finny about studying and Gene’s inner thoughts relate to the idea of enemies in the novel?

7.	On their way to see Leper jump from the tree, Gene states: Any fear I had ever had of the tree was nothing beside this. It wasn’t my neck, but my understanding which was menaced. He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he (32). Based on these lines, what is Gene’s epiphany? After his epiphany, Gene states: Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud. It was the first clumsy physical action I have ever seen him make. With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten (32). What do you think Gene means by “my fear of this”? What is “this”? Why do you think Gene this incident “the first clumsy physical action” he ever saw Finny make? Do you think this is an accurate description? What is significant about the fact that Finny’s fall takes place almost immediately after Gene’s epiphany?

8.	At the beginning of Chapter 5 we find out that Finny’s leg has been shattered? At this point in the novel, what else has been symbolically shattered? Explain.

9.	Why do you think Finny does not believe Gene when he tells him that he caused the accident at the tree? (pages 38 – 39) Compare this conversation (Gene’s first confession) with the following conversation at the mock trial: “I don’t care,” he interrupted in an even voice, so full of richness that it overrode all the others. “I don’t care.” I tore myself from the bench toward him. “Phineas--!” He shook his head sharply, closing his eyes, and then he turned to regard me with a handsome mask of face, “I just don’t care. Never mind,” and he started across the marble floor toward the doors (106). What is implied by the words “mask of face”? Why do you think Finny leaves the trial? Immediately after he leaves, Finny falls down the marble stairs and shatters his leg a second time. At this point in the novel what is symbolically shattered?

10.	The war began to change life at Devon for the boys. After shoveling snow at the railroad yard, Gene decides to enlist with Brinker Hadley. Gene states: To enlist. To slam the door impulsively on the past, to shed everything down to my last bit of clothing, to break a pattern of my life—that complex design I had been weaving since birth with all its dark threads, its unexplainable symbols set against a conventional background of domestic white and schoolboy blue, all those tangled strands which required the dexterity of a virtuoso to keep flowing—I yearned to take giant military shears to it, snap! Bitten off in an instant, and nothing left in my hands but spools of khaki which could weave only a plain, flat, khaki design, however twisted they might be (58). According to these lines, why does Gene want to enlist—what is his true motivation? What does this reveal to us about Gene?

11.	After Gene accomplishes many athletic feats during the Winter Carnival he states: …to accept at the end of it amid the clatter of applause—for on this day even the schoolboy egotism of Devon was conjured away—a wreath made of evergreen trees which Phineas placed on head. It wasn’t the cider which made me surpass myself, it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace (81). What were the “gray encroachments of 1943”? What was “the escape [they] had concocted”? What was their “special and separate peace,” and why was it “momentary and illusory”?

12.	When Leper tells Gene about a Section Eight, how many times does Leper mention the phrase “savage underneath”? What does he mean by this? How does Gene respond? Why? How is his response similar to two previous incidents in the novel (hint: the tree and the Butt Room)? How does this scene symbolize what is going on in the world outside the Devon campus?

13.	Beginning with the passage (in the last paragraph on page 112), “There were hints of much worse things around us now…,” read through the end of the first paragraph on page 113. When considering these lines and the previous events of the novel, explain how Devon in a microcosm of the world outside the campus.

14.	Re-read the passages beginning at the bottom of page 113 through the end of the first full paragraph on page 115. What does Gene mean by “some ignorance inside me”? How does Finny respond to Gene’s confession? What is important / significant about the way he responds? In other words, how does this affect Gene?

15.	After Finny’s death, Gene states: I was ready for war, now that I no longer had any hatred to contribute to it. My fury was gone, I felt it gone, dried up at the source, withered and lifeless. Phineas had absorbed it and taken it with him, and I was rid of it forever (122). Why do you think Gene is now ready for war? What was his “fury”? Gene also states: 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 (122). How did Gene’s “war [end] before [he] ever put on a uniform”? What does he mean when he says he “was on active duty all [his] time at school”? Who was the enemy he killed?

16.	At the end of the novel, the narrator states: All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way—if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy” (123). Who are “them”? What is a Maginot Line? What were their “Maginot Lines”? What was the “infinite cost to themselves” for constructing such lines? Who was the “enemy” they saw—“if he was indeed the enemy”?

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