Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Transformations
There are a number of significant transformations within
the course of A Separate Peace. Finny is transformed
from a healthy athlete into a cripple after his accident and then
sets about transforming Gene into an athlete in his stead. These
developments function as part of the broader process by which Gene’s
identity blurs into Finny’s, a transformation symbolized by Gene’s
putting on Finny’s clothes one evening soon after the accident.
Meanwhile, the summer session at Devon, a time of peace and carefree
innocence, metamorphoses into the winter session, in which rules
and order hold sway and the darkness of the war encroaches on Devon.
In a broad sense, the novel is intimately concerned with the growth
of boys into men. The horrifying visions of transformation that
drive Leper from the army—men turning into women, men’s heads on
women’s bodies—embody all of the anxieties that plague his classmates
as they deal with the joint, inevitable onset of war and adulthood.
Athletics
A Separate Peace is filled with athletic
activities, from the tree-climbing that is central to the plot to
swimming, skiing, and snowball fights. For the most part, these
games shed light on the character of Finny, who is a tremendous
athlete but who nevertheless despises competition (in contrast to
Gene) and imagines athletics as a realm of pure vitality and achievement,
without winners and losers. This mindset is evident in the way that
he behaves after breaking the school swimming record—he refuses
to let Gene tell anyone about his feat—and in the game of blitzball,
which he invents. Blitzball is the perfect game for Finny because
it requires tremendous exertion and agility yet is impossible to
win and focuses on pure athleticism rather than the defeat of opponents.
