Gene Forrester never wanted to kill his best friend and childhood. But the shake of a branch and the jolt of a limb dislodged more than his comrade's feet. Years of friendship, in addition to Finny's body, plummeted through the branches below.
Flash backwards. Two teenage boys, Gene and Finny, are rollicking on the grounds of New Hampshire's Devon School in the summer of 1942. Gene, an introspective and shrewd boy attending the academy on scholarship, is the antithesis of Finny, an extraordinarily popular but innocently unassuming jock who comes from "old money."
During the lazy hours of the summer session, the pair decides out of sheer boredom to create a group called the Super Suicide Society of the summer session. The suicide part comes from the initiation rite: jumping into the Devon River from a perilously thin, brittle tree.
Gene is jealous of Finny's athleticism and flowing wit. He erroneously assumes that Finny is envious of his intellect and trying to sabotage his shot at valedictorian.
When the two decide to jump from the branch together during initiation, a soul-flaying impulse forces Gene to jostle the limb. Finny falls from the branch, breaks his leg and is told that he can never play sports again.
During the entire span of Finny's convalescence, Gene attempts to apologize to Finny, but Finny cannot force the fact that his best friend chose to mar him. Perhaps it is Finny's glimmering confidence in Gene's trustworthiness that makes John Knowles' "A Separate Peace" the epitome of coming-of-age novels.
I love "A Separate Peace." I first read the book when I was a freshman, and I have reread it at least four times since then, once each year of high school. Each perusal brings with it new wonders: an allusion, a hidden irony, a subtle symbol that I never before detected.
The heartrending book is simply written, but that is because most tragedies are simple. Pain does not have to convoluted.
As the novel progresses, one can count on a single hand the parts of ruin.
Gene has two shaky legs and one burrowed, jealous thought that forces Finny's leg into a cast. And his spirit is wounded next.
It takes a leg splintered two times for Finny's will to be crushed, and it takes three attempts from Gene to tell Finny the truth about the accident before Finny believes him. Yet Gene himself doesn't know whether or not he meant to jounce the limb.
Gene does more than just shatter the white bone of his friend's leg, though.
When the doctor trying to set Finny's tibia after its second break accidentally errs, a bit of marrow breaks away and travels through Finny's blood to his heart, killing him.
Finny's death is symbolic in two ways: one, Finny dies of a "broken heart" only minutes after accepting Gene's apology for the accident. And two, his perishing gives weight to the words utter by the two's friend, Elwin "Leper" Lepellier, a loner turned psychotic recluse because of the war.
"All must evolve or else it perishes," Leper said. His words summarize the theme of the novel.
Leave it to a quack -- broken himself because he was unable to relinquish his sensitive ways and bear the smoke of war -- to postulate on human identity.
Finny, the paradigm of blamelessness, represents the childhood that everyone must leave behind when innocence fades. Because he cannot change -- because he cannot accept the truths of war, pain and hatred -- he perishes.
Yet it is Gene himself who utters the most haunting passage in the novel: "Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth."
But what is this reality? What is absolute? What cruel impulse slices the human heart until it's willing to kill fraternal love?
Knowles, a West Virginia native, died in 2001 and was buried with this most burning secret: Did Gene intentionally jounce the limb?