The beauty of the campus still impresses him, even in a cold rain, but the school itself seems like "a museum," a place to observe rather than to inhabit. Gene's recognition of the changes in Devon shows the ways he himself has changed. In encountering the past, Gene hopes to understand the crucial events that shaped his adulthood, in order to face them and finally move beyond them. The visit is private, his goal personal - to revisit two "fearful sites" from his youth. Significantly, he makes his visit alone, not as part of an official homecoming or alumni reunion. The novel opens with the narrator, Gene, returning to his old prep school Devon. They slip into the dormitory, where they read their English assignments and play their radio (against school rules), until it is time for bed.Ī Separate Peace tells a story of initiation - the account of Gene Forrester's growth from adolescence into adulthood during World War II. While the rest of the boys hurry ahead at the sound of the bell for dinner, the roommates playfully wrestle until they are late for the meal. The shared danger of jumping brings Finny and Gene closer. Against his better judgment, Gene climbs the tree and also jumps, but the three others refuse. The tree seems enormous to Gene, but Finny suddenly decides to climb it and jump into the river, just like the Devon 17 year olds, who are training for military service. Gene stands at the same tree with his best friend and roommate, Phineas (nicknamed Finny), and three other boys, Elwin Lepellier (Leper), Chet Douglass, and Bobby Zane. He is attending a special Summer Session at Devon, designed to speed up education to prepare the boys for the military draft in their senior year. The second section opens during the summer of 1942 when Gene is 16. The chapter section ends with Gene heading back to shelter through the rain. The tree, he thinks, is smaller than he remembers. Then he trudges across the playing fields to the river in search of a particular tree and finally recognizes it by its long limb over the water and the scars on its trunk. Gene walks through the campus on a bleak, rainy November afternoon, revisiting the buildings and fields he remembers - and especially two places he recalls as "fearful sites." At the First Academic Building, he enters the foyer to look closely at the white marble steps. Strangely, the school seems newer, but perhaps, he thinks, the buildings are just better taken care of now that the war is over. Gene has not seen Devon for 15 years, and so he notices the ways in which the school has changed since he was a student there. As the novel opens, Gene Forrester returns to Devon, the New Hampshire boarding school he attended during World War II.
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