A Seperate Peace

A Seperate Peace

Rebecca Kirchner
9-19-07
Period 3
English


In 1959, John Knowles wrote a book named “A Separate Peace”. He conveyed the theme of the loss of innocence by showing how everybody has some innocence in them but having too much is not healthy. He showed how ironic things can be. He conveyed how as people get older they lose their innocence but some people just hold onto it until they are truly ready to give it up.
“With the sensation that I was throwing my life away, I jumped into space. Some tips of branches snapped past me and I was in the water.” In this excerpt from the novel, Gene is losing his innocence by jumping into the water that was unknown to him. He said that he was “throwing his life away” but maybe at that point in his life, his life was his innocence, or what remained of it. Gene threw his innocence away without even being aware of it. Gene also loses his innocence in a different way, a maturing way. At the beginning of the novel, Gene was a child and not aware of how being jealous of Finny will affect him in later times. He slowly outgrows this jealousy of his best friend and therefore showing the qualities of an adult-like person who is ready for the challenges to come. Gene matures and becomes aware of how much he had had changed since he met Finny and how much he had matured.
Finny was a very innocent character throughout the story, he enjoyed the summer which seemed to be an innocent season. Finny’s loss of innocence came when he put the pink shirt on that symbolized the support that he had for the war. At that time, he was maturing and beginning to realize the problems that were out there in the world beyond Devon School. Finny also lost his innocence when he fell out of the tree and broke his leg for the first time. He learns after discovering the hatred that Gene felt towards him that he needed to stop thinking of the world as some place where everything is perfect and there are no problems to be dealt with. Finny’s loss of innocence...