Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Threat of Codependency to Identity
The central relationship in the novel—that between Finny
and Gene—involves a complex dynamic of seeking to establish, yet being
uncomfortable with, identity. Early in the book, the boys’ relationship
seems fueled, in part, by Gene’s envy and resentment of his friend’s
dominating spirit. As Finny demonstrates his physical prowess, Gene
feels the need to accentuate his academic prowess. Finny’s
fall from the tree, however, apparently purges Gene of his darker
feelings and steers their relationship in a different direction so
that codependency rather than envy characterizes it. The scene immediately
following the fall symbolizes this evolution, as Gene dresses in
Finny’s clothes and sees himself as looking exactly like him. From
this point on, he and Finny come to depend on each other for psychological
support. Gene plays sports because Finny cannot, allowing Finny
to train him to be the athlete that Finny himself cannot be. This
training seems an avenue for Finny simply to live vicariously through
Gene. But Gene actively welcomes this attempt by Finny, for just
as Finny derives inner strength from fulfilling his dreams through
Gene, so, too, does Gene find happiness in losing his own self (which
he seems to dislike) in Finny’s self (which he likes very much).
Thus, the boys’ relationship becomes a model of codependency, with
each feeding off of, and becoming fulfilled by, the other. This codependency
preempts the development of their individual identities, perhaps
dangerously: by living within their own private illusion that World
War II is a mere conspiracy and continuing to believe that Gene
(and Finny through him) will go to the Olympics and that the outside
world can never curtail their dreams, the boys are refusing to grow
up and develop their own ambitions and responsibilities. Not even
Finny’s death, though it separates them physically, can truly untangle
Gene’s identity from Finny’s—he feels as though Finny’s funeral
is his own. In a sense, the reader realizes, the funeral is indeed
Gene’s own; so much of him is merged with Finny that it is difficult
to imagine one boy continuing to exist without the other. It is
perhaps only his ultimate understanding that Finny alone had no enemy
that allows the older Gene to reestablish a separate identity—one
that he considers, however, inferior to Finny’s.
The Creation of Inner Enemies
A Separate Peace takes place during wartime
and is emphatically a novel about war—and yet not a single shot
is fired in the course of the story, no one dies in battle, and
only the unfortunate Leper even joins the military before graduation.
Instead, Knowles focuses on the war within the human heart, a war
that is affected by the events of World War II but exists independently
of any real armed conflict. For Knowles—or at least for his narrator,
Gene—every human being goes to war at a certain point in life, when
he or she realizes that the world is a fundamentally hostile place
and that there exists in it some enemy who must be destroyed. The
novel implicitly associates this realization of the necessity of
a personal war with adulthood and the loss of childhood innocence.
For most of Gene’s classmates, World War II provides the catalyst
for this loss, and each reacts to it in his own way—Brinker by nurturing
a stance of bravado, for example, and Leper by descending into madness.
Gene himself, though, states that he fought his own war
while at Devon and killed his enemy there. The obvious implication
is that Finny, as the embodiment of a spirit greater than Gene’s
own, was his enemy, casting an unwavering shadow over Gene’s life.
One might alternatively interpret Gene’s statement to mean that
this enemy was himself, his own resentful, envious nature, which
he “killed” either by knocking Finny from the tree or by obtaining
forgiveness from Finny for doing so. In either case, the overall
theme is clear: all humans create enemies for themselves and go
to war against them. Everyone, that is, except Finny, the champion
of innocence, who refuses to believe that anyone could be his enemy.
In a sense, Finny’s death is inevitable: his innocence makes him
too good for the war-torn and inimical world in which the rest of
humanity lives.
