A Separate Peace

joeycollin13 - In the book A Separate Peace we enter a world filled with thoughts of war, rivalries both imagined and real between friends, and a tree which reflects the idea of what World War II is to the young boys filling the pages of the book. The tree symbolizes what they imagine the war to be. The tree stands stable through the challenges the boys face. Phineas, who is both Gene’s friend and roommate, creates a game where they jump off of the tree every day after classes into the pond below. Gene hates this daily event, thinking of it as an annoying obstacle that he was pressured into and must participate in to keep his integrity. Later in the book, he faces the war in the same manner. Gene views most things as necessary but obnoxious activities that he is expected to participate in. Phineas, one the other hand, likes the game of leaping off the tree and proving his bravery every day. He enjoys rebelling against the school rules in a respectful but careless manner, and disobeys the rules every chance he gets. He thinks of the tree as just a game, but it represents the idea of war for him, whether he knows it or not. The war is something in which he will prove himself but never take seriously. Phineas never got to participate in the war, though. He was injured while falling out the the tree, and eventually died before he was drafted. Gene believes it’s for the best that he was never in the war; he said Phineas would befriend the Americans’ enemies and would confuse the soldiers so much that no one would know who they were fighting anymore. He would befriend both Americans and Germans, and maybe unite the countries again. Phineas never took things seriously, he had a carefree attitude in everything from jumping out of a tall tree to fighting in a war. A Separate Peace is a story surrounding a tree which ruins Phineas’s promising life, watches boys march away to war, and remains steadfast through it all. The tree is the first thing that Gene wishes to see when he returns to the boarding school where he lived while he was young. It seems smaller to him when he sees it at last, just as all of the war’s events might seem once he is released from its service. In the future, he might remember it as just a small part of his life which seemed large, and annoying, at the time that he was facing it. But it won’t matter anymore, just as the tree won’t matter once it dies and is cut down.