Adulthood in A Separate Peace by John Knowles

In John Knowles’ A Separate Peace adulthood is a loss of innocence. In his novel, A Separate Peace, the young boys are fighting internal battles while facing a world that’s forcing them to grow up. Then readers are shown when they boys have transitioned from boys to men. The two most obvious examples of this are the two who fell victim to their own conscience, Gene and Leper. The main difference being one’s innocence was stolen and the other's given away. 

Gene is a very complex character because he’s his own antagonist. Gene spends a large amount of the novel being spineless. This worked in his relationship with Finny (best friend) and to him he was an extension of Finny. He was wrapped up in a world of insecurity and uncertainty that Finny never showed signs of and Finny was like an escape from the real world. Eventually his envy takes over and he begins to question the authenticity of their relationship. He allowed himself to get wrapped up in an extremely one sided competition with Finny. Upon realization of how one sided the competition is he snaps. He says, “...my knees bent and I jounced the limb”(Knowles, pg 28). Then he describes Finny’s fall by saying he “...hit the bank with a sickening unnatural thud”(Knowles, pg 28) . He had hurt his best friend. This is when Gene gave away his innocence. 

Leper was Gene’s opposite in many ways. The most important being that he was secure in himself. His change is the most dramatic in the book as he goes from a sweet nature loving boy to a traumatized, hallucinating “psycho”. Leper loved to ski and as he was older than the boys was destined to go off to war before them. When he found out about the ski troops he signed up thinking it would be the best branch for him. His experiences were so horrific that he “escaped” which didn’t make sense because he chose to be there. When he finally talks to Gene after reaching out he tells him about what happened to him. He asks Gene, “ Would they bother you if you did, if you saw what happened to keep imagining a man's head on a woman’s body...” (Knowles, pg 79), when explaining his hallucinations. The Leper that loved plants and skiing was now seeing “the arm of a chair turned into a human arm” (Knowles, pg 79) and couldn’t live the same. His experience in the military stole his innocence.

Adulthood is a very challenging concept. The main argument surrounding it is about how to classify it,by age or by experience. In A Separate Peace, boys become men. The most dramatic transitions are in Gene and Leper. They were exposed to the cruelness life possesses and no longer had that protective layer of being a child. The loss of that layer is the loss of innocence. It's evident because these moments were huge turning points in each character's narrative. Their lives before these moments pale in comparison to their lives after because it's only now that they are faced with “real” problems.