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Fighting the Storm, Receiving a Rainbow

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Peace is the antonym to war, an oxymoron, two terms rarely used in conjunction with one another. Throughout John Knowles’s, A Separate Peace, peace and war cross paths in many occasions. During the primary years of World War II, the students at Devon School went through much pain and distress but also built stronger friendships and harmony during their high school career. And just as the world works through the kinks and unoiled gears of life, the students dealt with the agony. They might not have all made it out alive, but they all learned something from it and became stronger through the experience. Where peace and war collide are some of the most momentous events in their lives that they remember forever. The summer before Phineas …show more content…

(Signed) Your best friend, Elwin Leper Lepellier” (Knowles 192). All the fun and games end when reality crashes their merrymaking. Leper’s telegram does put their hearts to rest because it tells them that he is still alive, but since he has fled and went AWOL, they should be apprehensive about what combat has done to him. Here it shows how in the end, they were able to disregard life for a while and collectively get together as friends to have fun for a short while. But, when the message from Leper is brought around, it called the war to attention and illustrated what their future could look like. Gene is now thrown the responsibility of saving Leper, forcing him to be more grown up—the bigger guy. Visiting Leper made Gene mature faster, because he saw what the war did to Leper, almost requiring him to put on a strong face for everyone and keep it to himself. The scene when Phineas and Gene are talking before he is taken in for surgery and dies is one of the most significant events in the book, because it explains what happened to their friendship. After realizing that Gene jounced the branch on purpose, Finny felt extreme hatred for his best friend and just wanted nothing to do with him. He felt betrayed because he had known. Finny knew exactly what Gene had done; he knew it but simply would not believe someone so close would become detached and disloyal. So once he came to realization that it in fact was true, he wanted to forget it all

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