Gene, like all the other students his age at Devon, will soon be drafted to the army for World War 2. Just like many of the other students, he is excited to get into the war, although it may be for a different reason for him than for others. For Gene, to join the war is to, "to slam the door impulsively on the past" (Knowles 100). For Gene, the war is an escape from the life he has right now. No matter how much he, or anyone else, says, the moment of the double jump with Finny still stays with him, on whether or not it is still his fault that Finny fell and shattered his leg. This thought haunts him, and he can never forget it. So, he decides that signing up for the war would be the best way to get rid of the memory. As a soldier, all ties to his life before it will be cut, and the things he did before the war will become insignificant to him. He will be too preoccupied to even think about his life before the war, and will slowly draw away from it.
Do you think the war will affect him as deeply as he says? Will he ever forget these events?
I may have misinterpreted this in the book, but I thought that Gene didn't want to go to war. I thought that Gene just felt as though he had to go. "Why go through all the motions of getting an education and watch the war slowly chip away at the one thing I had loved here, the peace, the measureless, careless peace of the Devon summer camp" (Knowles 101). I interpreted this quote as Gene saying that it was useless for him to try to study if he was just going to have to go fight in a war. The war would make Devon summer not so peaceful anymore, because once he joined the war he was no longer part of "a separate peace." In other words the Devon summer was a separate peace, but once he left for the war there would be no separation of peace and war it would be all war. I felt as though he was saying he would HAVE to join the war.
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ReplyDeleteIn addition to what Tayseer said, I think that Gene and Brinker want to join the war because they want a place where they feel useful and wanted. After Gene sees the troop train pass by while he is working on the railroad, he feels "stranded in this mill town railroad yard while the whole world was converging elsewhere" (Knowles 97). While other men, some Gene's age (as he witnessed in the train car) are coming together to fight for a cause, the Devon boys, as Brinker points out are stuck at "a school for photographers of beaver dams" (Knowles 99). In other words, the two boys feel almost useless in their sheltered prep school worlds away from the war. In these desperate times, Gene longs to become more than just a teenager studying to pass his tests. He wants to feel helpful and feel the reward as he "goes places" (Knowles 97), just like the soldiers in the train.
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