A Separate Peace

1
A Separate Peace Ch. 13
2
Finny

• Boys dont talk about what happened to Finny or
  accuse Gene of hurting him.
• They couldnt believe it.
• They couldnt understand it.
• Gene recognizes that war, despite Phineas, does
  exist and that it grows out of the ignorance of
  the human heart.

3
Brinkers Dad

• Represents old, outdated view of war.
• Thinks war is glamorous.
• War defines a mans worth.
• Brinker embarrassed by his fathers attitude.
• Gene realizes the his private evil, which caused
  him to hurt Finny, is the same evil only
  magnified that results in war.

4
Boys - War

• Boys not eager to go to war.
• Gene Navy
• Hopes never to see a foxhole
• Brinker Coastguard
• Relatively safe choice (wont see as much combat)
• Views adults attitude towards war as childish

5
Gene Learns

• The enemy never comes from without, but always
  from within.
• There is no defense to be built, only an
  acceptance and purification of oneself through
  love.
• Every person will experience a breaking point
  where they recognize the reality of the world.
• (some ideas borrowed from James Ellis)

6
Key Quote

• Because it seemed clear that wars were not made
  by generations and their special stupidities, but
  that wars were made instead by something ignorant
  in the human heart (201).

7
Key Quote

• Phineas alone had escaped thisNothing as he was
  growing up at home, nothin at Devon, nothing even
  about the war had broken his harmonious and
  natural unity. So at last I had (202-203).

8
Key Quote

• I was ready for the war, no 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 (203).

9
Key Quote

• 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.