#1 Plot Summary

In “A Separate Peace,” we find a man traveling through a neighborhood in New England traveling to an old school of his, Devon.  As he visits the school, old memories begin to be stirred up from the past and we begin to see the beginning of a very long flashback.  This flashback is mainly the entire book.   During this flashback we see all of the major events of this man’s, Gene’s, childhood in its last moments. We find that Gene was a very academic kid, and how his friend Finny was a very athletic.  One major event that we see is the first time that Finny breaks his leg.  At Devon, the summer sessions were the most unorganized.  Boys ran around aimlessly with all of the freedom in the world, so naturally boys being boys; they all found something rather dangerous to do.  The created a club of sorts, “The Super Suicide Society,” and for this club every single night they have to jump into the Devon River.  One day Finny and Gene decide to go together at the same time.  This naturally ends in disaster, Finny falls from the tree and breaks his leg, this ends his athletic career forever.  But how he falls is rather interesting.  According to Gene, he “jounces” the limb as Finny was preparing to jump.  This unfortunately later causes conflict in their relationship.  Another major event that we see in Gene’s childhood is when he visits his friend Leper in Vermont.  Leper had previously been enlisted in the ski troops, but as Gene had discovered from visiting him in Vermont, Leper had received a “Section 8 discharge.” This basically meant that Leper had been discharged due to insanity.  Leper ends up telling Gene about his insanity and how people treated him due to his discharge.  He even described what sort of hallucinations he experienced due to his insanity.  All of this made Gene extremely uncomfortable and so he snapped at Leper saying, “Do you think I want to hear every gory detail! Shut Up!” (151) a final major event of Gene’s childhood, and perhaps the last event of his childhood is when his best friend died Finny died.  Finny dome how managed to break his leg a second time, however this time it was a clean break all the way through the bone.  Dr. Stanpole eventually tried to set the bone back in its proper place and in the process, some of Finny’s bone marrow escaped from the bone and into his blood stream.  It traveled though the blood stream all the way to his heart which stopped it and led to his unfortunate death.  The most interesting thing about this event however was not Finny’s death, but Gene’s reaction to Finny’s death.  When Dr. Stanpole told him the news, Gene never cried about it.  Not a single time throughout his entire life did he ever cry about Finny’s death, not even at Finny’s funeral did he even cry.  I think that this is when Gene had transitioned from being a child to a fully matured and grown adult.  This transition was also a great place for Knowles to end his story.