"A Separate Peace" by John Knowles

CHAPTER 1 Summary The narrator of the story, Gene Forrester returns to Devon, a school in New Hampshire that he attended fifteen years earlier. Gene walks around the school's campus, everything seems new and shiny with a fresh coat of varnish as if it is on display. The campus looks the same as when Gene was there fifteen years earlier, it is almost frozen in time. Gene has come back to the school to visit a …

…didn't need to go off to war; he had already fought his own war while at Devon, the war with himself. He was battling constantly to be better than Finny. He didn't kill anyone while at war because, he had already killed the enemy, his best friend Finny. The novel ends with Finny reflecting on how Finny never saw an evil in the world; everything was good through Finny's eyes and this kept him innocent.