asp essay

When Boys Become Men
Possibly the most crucial moment in a young boy’s life, adulthood emerges only when he outgrows his childish behaviors and acknowledges the world for what it truly is. The internal struggle for his identity is no longer causing agony. He finally starts to comprehend the complexity of the world and by accepting it, has escaped from the confusion of his adolescence. John Knowles displays how drastic this change can be through Gene Forrester and Brinker Hadley in his novel, A Separate Peace. The novel begins with an already matured Gene reflecting on his high school years at Devon during World War II. Throughout his flashback, he deals with the insanity of his teenage years filled with envy, hatred, depression, and confusion. In the end, however, he overcomes these obstacles and finally matures into a man. The novel demonstrates how boys become men through the Gene’s maturity after Finny’s death and Brinker’s change in perspective.
In Gene’s adolescent state of mind, he is distinctly insecure in himself. His instability is visible through his relationship with Phineas, the most influential part of his life. He feels overwhelming jealousy and becomes obsessed in this envy. He describes his suffering when he says, “My misery was too deep to speak anymore. I scanned the page; I was having trouble breathing, as though oxygen were leaving the room” (53). In trying to justify his feelings he says, “The deadly rivalry was on both sides after all” (54). These quotes clearly illustrate Gene’s teenage angst. The roots of his emotions are not in Finny; however, they grow from his internal struggle for his identity. He is evidently deteriorating on an extreme level from this confusion. He entirely apprehends his true enemy after Finny’s death, and therefore he learns and flourishes from these experiences.
Although he once was the object that Gene directed his dark emotions toward, Finny’s death causes Gene to truly understand the world. Directly following Phineas’s demise, the overall focus shifts from Gene’s and Phineas’s friendship to the approaching war. In the harmonious atmosphere, Gene provides a profound insight about the continuation of Finny’s legacy, “During the time I was with him, Phineas created an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations…” (202). Here Gene realizes that he should adopt the extraordinary characteristics of Phineas thus erasing his envy for him. This empathy demonstrates that Gene has rid himself of his adolescent perplexity. He no longer feels the overwhelming envy that has been traumatizing him.
His last piece of wisdom reveals that he has entirely matured, “I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there” (204). Gene ultimately understands the roots of his struggle. His enemy was not Finny; it was the ignorance in his heart that had prevented him from accepting the world for what it is. With Finny’s death, this evil part in Gene died with him. Gene is not the only dynamic character; Brinker also matures from his experiences at Devon.
Throughout the novel, Brinker evolves from a naïve individual into one who is more knowledgeable of the world. His maturity is evident through his meeting with his father. Formerly, Brinker was an arrogant leader; he administered orders to many of his classmates out his whim; however, when he speaks to his father, Brinker seemed to become more serious, and he realizes that the war is full of absurdity and injustice. He says, ‘“I’m going to ‘serve’ as he puts it, I may even get killed. But I’ll be damned if I’ll have that Nathan Hale attitude of his about it. It’s all that World War I malarkey that gets me. They’re all children about the war, did you never notice?’”(201) This quote demonstrates Brinker’s acceptance of the war. He no longer supports the war after apprehending its injustice; however he accepts it, and he enlists in the army. The inevitability of the war drove Brinker to mature from his naïve actions.
Over the course of the novel, two young boys changed into mature men. Gene learns from his encounters with Finny and erased his adolescent insanity, while Brinker thrives to fully understand the war. Gene’s ignorance causes him to act in questionable ways, but once Finny died, he finally realized the problem was within him. The novel portrays both the evil of adolescence and the optimistic light once it is overcome. Devon truly is the place where boys become men; it is the battlefield of Gene’s internal war in which Gene surmounted his adolescence and stepped into the maturity of manhood, and it is the learning place of Brinker’s journey to understand something greater than him.