A Seperate Peace

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorHigh School, 10th grade September 2001

download word file, 2 pages 5.0

A separate peace "A separate peace" takes place in Devon School, a prep school in New Hampshire. Gene Forrester, the narrator, returns to look at the school grounds fifteen years after he was a student there. Since his last year as a student in 1943, the present Devon of 1958 seems foreign to him. In this book the author has mentioned water many times throughout the book. He talks about two different rivers near Devon High School where the story takes place. Gene and Finny, the main characters of the story are two teenage boys that don't have very many things in common, but still manage to remain good friends. The rivers: Naguamsett and Devon are the opposite of each other just like the boys. The rivers have personification, meaning they have been given humanlike characteristics. Each river with its unique qualities represents one of the boys.

Naguamsett is a saltwater river near Devon School which joins the ocean and because if this, its movements were governed by unimaginable factors like the Gulf Stream, the Polar Ice Cap, and the moon.

It is described as ugly, turbid saline, fringed with marsh, mud and seaweed. On the other hand the Devon river is a fresh-water river where the boys preferred and had much fun at. Its course was determined by familiar hills and a little inland. It rose among the highland farms and forests that the boys knew, and passed through the school ground and ended w/ joining a small waterfall beside the boys' diving dam, and into Nagumsett. Looking at Devon river brought along a good refreshing feeling where as looking at Naguamsett made gene feel dark and depressed inside.

Gene, the narrator is a lonely, introverted intellectual who lets jealousy run the course of his teenage years.