About this title: At a New England boarding school during World War II, a group of boys discover the depths of human nature among themselves, and the evil that even the most innocent is capable of.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Tiring of typical grade school fare I surreptitiously ordered A Separate Peace from the "other side" of the monthly Bantam book order form - unbeknownst to my Mother and my teacher. As grade school and high school books were shipped intermingled I plucked my order from the school shipment the moment the boxes were opened. Before I even opened the book I sensed that if I wanted to finish it, I better do so secretly.
I had no trouble reading the piece from a vocabulary standpoint but more importantly I found I was capable of transcending my years in grasping the mature subject matters it proposed. In retrospect I probably had no business reading such a book at such an early age.
But I did.
And it forever changed my understanding of what books could be."
"I hadn't thought of writing a review of this book until I read how many people disliked it. Far from wanting to simply "prove" others were wrong, I began thinking about why others might not like this book and its message. First, it is somewhat legitimate to dislike anything one must read in high school. However, if you never get past that point, life isn't much worth living. If you never come back and read some of the things on your own, you just aren't much of a human being. Rant as one will against the unpleasantness of secondary educational methods, sooner or one ought to recognize that explaining value the wrong way isn't a denial of the concept. With that said, I still don't care for the heavy handedness of symbolism in, say, Billy Budd.
Second, I began to think about all the people today who run away from hit and run accidents, ostensibly for selfish reasons, and I tried to see if there was some sort of parallel with issues of honor and accountability and the apparent plethora of irresponsible behavior. While there may be some grain of truth to this, I think this book's message evades the modern mind on still another level.
This book is a bit heavy handed on the imagery also, beginning with a snotty group at a prep school. In a day when rich people appear somewhat vile to some, (perhaps because they must be forced to share their wealth with us,) perhaps a prep school doesn't serve as a good choice setting in which to begin. When I first read this book years ago, I recall feeling so alienated from the setting that I thought that whatever ills happened to anyone at this school, they all deserved it just because they were there. Unfortunately, all that feeling did was make me feel uncomfortably similar to Gene. I thought the Super Suicide Society was a bit silly too, perhaps an anachronism or even doing Hitler's SS an extra letter for heavy symbolism. It was, at the same time, too juvenile and yet too replete with boyish bravado.
The two main characters are, nevertheless, interesting. I think that Gene is the kind of everyman with a touch more paranoia thrown in, suspecting that everyone must think pretty much like he does, even if it is done in secret. Finny (and how can anyone today admire someone named Phineas?) is the perfect antagonist. He is the one who can flaunt tradition but do so with such an open heart that he is automatically popular. From what I read about about John F. Kennedy, the two seem to have the same charisma, maybe even the same persona. Gene knows that if he tried half of what Finny did, he couldn't pull it off. The rest of us know it about ourselves too. This includes the elitist, Brinker Hadley. The book is worth reading just being able to watch people like Hadley squirm. Yet once again, perhaps we don't see these characterizations much any more in what has unfortunately become a PC society.
Further I thought that the underlying theme of the war doesn't work very well any longer either, perhaps society as a whole becoming so isolated from any concept of the necessity of war, individuals unwilling to sacrifice for any means beyond personal gain. When you are facing an impending great uncertainty, you tend to do things which negate that kind of looming doom, just like these boys did. That's something which is uncomfortable in itself, but perhaps our era of irresponsibility tends to dissolve our fear by making such things less inevitable.
However the main reason I believe that this book doesn't really carry a strong message to the modern reader is beyond all the things I have yet considered: the difficulty with appreciating this book isn't an itinerant selfishness, the desire to remain individual rather than a small part of the whole, nor is it about the inability to relate to prep school, inevitable deniability or even the heavy symbolism. I tend to think that the failure to recognize the importance of this book's message is our unwillingness to acknowledge in some very fundamental way, the pain we ultimately incur upon ourselves in life through the necessity of our actions. This book essentially pulls out our dirty laundry which we have hidden away, perhaps something we today brag about being natural and therefore no longer sinful. Perhaps it is our modern inability to acknowledge our living sin as having missed the mark in our daily lives.
I can certainly recall very easily my feeling justified in my actions when younger which purposefully hurt others only to acknowledge silently later that I was so very wrong. As I see it, that is what this book is about, not so much making the mistake, something irretrievably wrong, but learning to deal with the kind of repercussions which follow from our original loathsome behavior. I tend to think that this book might have been better titled, An Odious Wrong, A Separate Peace. Still, even had the author considered this, he knew that it was the conclusion which was the important part, the part which makes one a human being, being able to find a forgiveness of self rather than carrying the weight around forever. It is hard enough to face one's mistakes....and clearly this is an uncomfortable process for us, but it is a greater thing to be able to find a peace so that one can continue to not only exist but to live."
"One of the few assigned books in high school that I actually liked. It helped that I was in a school much like the one mentioned. Finny supplied us with several tricks that were perfect for bored, boarding school students, which added to the interest, of course. What drew me most to this book was that it captured the experience so well.
I've heard the novel disparaged because it's about a bunch of whiny rich kids. Obviously there's a lot of truth there, but these people miss the point. While privileged, the kids don't realize it. It's as natural to them as water to a fish, so it has to be ignored to see the real story which is the fragile identity of the kids & their struggles with it.
We're told the story from Gene's POV as an adult, although he obviously still harbors a lot of insecurities & isn't as accurate as he thinks in his reporting. He's still trying to decide where he stands. During the book, he's best friends with Finny who is as carefree as anyone can be, but he's torn between his friend & the conservative respectability that the school embodies, the expectations of his world. They're pretty much summed up in another school mate, Brinkman.
Added to Gene's confusion is his jealousy of Finny, who is a natural athlete. Gene can't measure up to his friend. He doesn't like himself for feeling this way, but the fact remains.
Not my normal reading, but I've re-read this a couple of times over the years, getting something a bit different out of it each time. The war time setting dates it a bit, but not too badly."
"Ugh. I had heard my friends from high school talk about how much they hated this book when they had to read it and thought perhaps hadn't been able to appreciate it as required reading. Turns out, it's just an awful book. Sympathy for the characters = 0. I kept turning pages against my will because a) I thought that there had to be SOMETHING redeeming about it (there's not) and b) because I was teaching it to 8th graders.
Besides the shoddy writing and boring plot/characters, the part that killed me was how Finny supposedly dies (some bone marrow from his broken leg gets into his blood stream then to his heart). This can't even HAPPEN. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh."
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