Fall from Innocence in a Separate Peace Essay Example

main reasons that Gene lost his innocence. Finny forced Gene to break the rules and do things such as go to the beach (46) -- students at Devon were supposed to remain on campus at all times -- and help to start the first Super Suicide Society (31): a group that meets every night and jumps off a branch into the river, something Gene would never have done on his own. If Gene hadn’t expanded his horizons to do the things that Finny wanted him to do, the friendship between the boys would have perished.

One night at a Super Suicide Society meeting Finny and Gene both decided they would jump off the branch together at the same time. While up on the tree, Gene purposefully jounced the branch causing Finny to fall from the branch to the ground and break his leg. This is where Gene’s true feelings were shown and his innocence is taken from him. Gene realizes that the world is not all good and that only the strong survive. Throughout the book Gene theorized that Finny had been jealous of Gene’s education and intellectual abilities.

In Gene’s mind, Finny wanted to be superior to Gene because Finny excelled at sports while Gene excelled at schoolwork. By jouncing the branch and making Finny fall, Gene thought that he could finally be better than Finny was. Finny was no longer able to neither participate in sports nor distract Gene from improving his education and completing is schoolwork. Gene lost his innocence, which caused him to believe that there was no good in the world and that everybody was out to get

him.

This led to Gene’s downfall by corrupting his brain and leading him to believe that the world was all evil. Gene never did evolve from what he had done. He had trouble returning to Devon even after 15 years. He has shown some growth since the incident, by returning to the school, but his tense expression showed he still has not over come what he has done Unlike Gene, Finny had to go through a physical fall to lead to his fall from innocence later in the book. Finny was an extremely extroverted childish young boy who was very athletically gifted.

Finny's fall eventually lead to terrible things: Physically, emotionally, and mentally. Physically, Finny lost a great deal of innocence when he fell out of the tree. Before this Finny had not experienced evil in this way before. Finny, for a long period of time, lost his ability to walk and was never able to play sports again. The fact Finny would never be able to play sports again took a mental toll on him because sports were his life. He lived to play sports and without them, Finny thought he was nothing.

This injury caused from falling off the tree branch ultimately led to his death. Without the occurrence of this incident, the need for a trial, for Finny to find out the truth about the incident, would not have been necessary (174). The trial emotionally took Finny’s innocence because he had to accept the truth and realize what Gene had been thinking of Finny this whole time. Finny could not evolve to the thought that Gene had purposefully caused

such harm to him. This notion was too much for him to handle.

He exited the trial and proceeded to fall down a flight of stairs. He had to go to the infirmary and eventually perished. Finny was innocent up until this point when he had to face the fact that Gene was evil towards him, and the fact that the whole world is full of evils. In contrast to the other two characters, Leper’s fall from innocence is demonstrated mostly through a mental and an emotional change. A quiet, peaceful, nature-loving boy, Leper shocked his classmates by becoming the first boy at Devon to enlist in the army.

From the beginning Leper remained innocent. He broke down under any sort of stress and did not know how to handle the bad in the world. When challenged to jump off the tree he froze (17), when tossed the ball in blitzball, he refused it (39), and, most importantly, when in the army he becomes “psychotic” and starts hallucinating (149). Leper portrayed innocence when enlisting for the army because his main reason for doing so, was so that he could enjoy skiing. Leper did not know how to handle the change that took place in him.

He knew that “it was the army which had done it to him…” (135), While Leper was in the army he could not handle being this far away from his home. He had always had somebody looking out for him, In Devon it was his peers and administrators, and at home it was his parents. This demonstrated his very own philosophy. Leper does not adapt nor evolve

to the changes of living when living the army life and therefore he loses his sanity and his innocence, which ultimately lead to death within him.

Innocence is displayed all throughout the novel. Each character, in one way or another, ended up losing it. Innocence greatly portrays Leper’s philosophy of "Everything must evolve or it will perish. " In A Separate Peace, innocence and Leper’s philosophy work together harmoniously within the characters of Gene, Leper, and Finny. This is because the characters cannot or do not evolve to their loss of innocence and suffer death, whether physical, emotional or mental, of some kind.