Transcript Characters & Theme - Mrs. McCrady's Classes

A Separate Peace
Characters & Theme
Gene Forester
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Unreliable Narrator/protagonist
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Gene is in his early thirties, visiting the Devon
School for the first time in years.
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Flashbacks to a story of his childhood from the
vantage point of adulthood.
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Has love-hate relationship with his best friend Finny
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Gene is also often jealous of Finny because he is
good at everything and so carefree
Finny
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Honest, handsome, energetic, self-confident, best
athlete in the school
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Extremely likable – able to talk his way out of any
situation
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Gene describes Finny like that of a Greek hero
(always excelling physically, always spirited.)
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Finny loves the thrill of competition and does not
care about winning/losing
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Always thinks the best of people, counts no one as
his enemy, and assumes that the world is a
fundamentally friendly place.
Ellwin “Leper” Lepellier
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Quiet, peaceful, nature-loving boy
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Shocks his classmates by being 1st in Devon to enlist in
the army
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Shocks them again by deserting army shortly after
joining
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Leper has hallucinations that reflect the fears and angst
of adolescence
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He fears transformation of boys into men—and, in
wartime, of boys into soldiers, which causes anxiety and
inner turmoil.
Brinker Hadley
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Straight-laced and conservative.
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Complete confidence in his own abilities
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Believes in justice and order and goes to
great lengths to discover the truth when he
feels that it is being hidden from him.
Cliff Quakenbush
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Manager of the crew team
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Boys at Devon have never liked
Quackenbush
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Frequently takes out his frustrations on
anyone whom he considers his inferior
Chet Douglass
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Gene’s main rival for the position of class
valedictorian
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Excellent tennis and trumpet player and
possesses a sincere love of learning.
Mr. Ludsbury
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The master in charge of Gene’s dormitory
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Stern disciplinarian
Dr. Stanpole
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Devon’s resident doctor
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Caring man who laments the troubles that
afflict the youth of Gene’s generation.
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Operates on Finny after his fall out of the
tree
Mr. Patch-Withers
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The substitute headmaster of Devon during
the summer session.
Runs the school with a lenient hand
Recap: Theme & Motif

Theme: a broad idea in a story, or a message or
lesson conveyed by a work
◦ A work can have more than one theme.
Motif: a reoccurring subject, theme, or idea in
a literary, artistic, or musical work.
 Difference between theme and motif:
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◦ Theme are ideas explored by the text.
◦ Motifs are reoccurring elements that represent
ideas.
Reflection
Central to the novel.
 Novel is spawned by a visit back to Gene’s old
school where Gene confesses that he is still
stuck in the time of WWII.
 His ability to recall things that happened 15
years ago is tremendous.
 Gene reiterates his thoughts on the past and on
the lasting impact of the events he describes.
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Reality vs. Memory
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Gene shows how memory can be tinged by
feelings that change how reality is perceived and
recalled.
It shows us the readers how things can be
obscured or emphasized in the memory via
emotional factors.
Gene remembers his old campus one way, yet
when he visits, he finds it quite different; this
happens often, as things can seem less imposing or
important when revisited, yet be so huge in one’s
memory.
Rebellion vs. Conformity
Gene is naturally a rule-abiding person.
 Finny has an absolute disregard for rules.
 This theme is evident in the differences between
the summer session and the fall session.
 Finny embodies both, as he is able to fit in well
enough at school, yet hold his own very
eccentric opinions.
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Innocence vs. Age
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Gene tells of how they were children set apart from adults by
their lack of knowledge of the war and their refuse to abandon
to their own small, happy worlds.
Huge difference between the semi-military drills that the seniors
endure versus the lackadaisical activities of the happy, peace
enveloped juniors.
Just as the war encroaches the boys, their adulthood looms
before them; Gene feels this especially. Leper is traumatized by
being thrown into adulthood.
Throughout the novel, Gene notes the difference between who
he is now, 15 years after Devon and who he was while at school.
He can identify the differences between the way he is, the way
he was, and how age has changed him.
Conscience & Guilt
These two haunt Gene especially; he feels a
great deal of sorrow for what he did/what
happened to Finny.
 He cannot face his sense of responsibility and
get rid of his guilt.
 Gene is not a bad person, he does have a
conscience, and does feel remorse but he
cannot face that part of himself that is guilty of
what happened.
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Gene & Finny as Foils
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Even though Gene and Finny are close, they are very
different in many ways.
Gene is academic/Finny is athletic
Gene is a hard worker/Finny is not
Gene follows the rules/Finny breaks them
Gene heeds authority figures/Finny does his best to
ignore them
The pair get along well BUT they seem to have little in
common aside from their differences.
The differences in their natures and their reactions to
Finny’s accident and to the war show them as two
contrasting people, as their differences, taken together,
make a vivid portrait of two very different people.
Time Passing
Things change a great deal over time- Gene knows he
has changed and grown up, the school has changed
for him, he cannot regain the old glory it had once.
 Gene makes mention of Finny’s accident and how it
marked the beginning of adulthood and
disillusionment.
 Even from summer session to fall, much has changed.
The boys are unable to regain a sense of peace and
security they had over the summer.
 Once past, things cannot be regained: youth, peace,
and innocence are transitory, as the passing of time
overwhelms them and makes them unrecoverable.
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War & Peace
Throughout Gene’s schooling, war threatens to break in
and destroy the fragile peace of the school.
 The summer session represents the height of peacenothing was able to interrupt the carefree joy of those
days.
 As the fall session begins, war slowly begins to encroach
on the boys; they start their “physical hardening” at the
school, recruitment officers start to come around, the
boys begin to talk of enlisting and the draft.
 The divide between peace and war is representative of
the gap between childhood and adulthood; while
peace holds out, the boys are free to be oblivious to the
outside world. But when confronted by the war, they
have to grow up; the strain changed them from children
to adults and obliterates the peace of their youth.
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Appearance vs. Reality
Book is made up of Gene’s “recollections”- the contents,
events, and characters are all filtered through his
individual POV.
 Gene tries to present himself as a rule-abiding, nice kind
of person; however, he is sometimes spiteful, jealous,
and has quite a temper when he is stirred up. Gene is
not a totally good person.
 Gene also represents Finny as a happy-go-lucky sort who
has been through few problems and has no inner
struggles.
 Finny is far more complex than Gene would like to
believe him to be; and what is on the surface sometimes
does not denote what is hidden underneath.
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Change Under Crisis
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Many of the boys ‹including Leper, Gene, and Finny ‹are
forced to change when they come upon some sort of
crisis situation, or some test of their characters.
Under the duress of having entered the military, Leper
loses his quiet innocence and becomes confused and
angry.
Finny's happiness and peace are shattered by Gene's
hurtful actions against him.
Gene becomes a better, more forgiving person because
of Finny.
As Gene says, all of the boys at the school will change
when they discover some oppressive, overwhelming
force in the world; change is inevitable, as the boys in
the book discover for themselves.