A Separate Peace †Denial of Truth Essay

The novel A Separate Peace focuses mainly around a 17 year antiquated named component Forrester and his psychological development. The story is set in a boys boarding school in USA during World War II. There atomic number 18 quadruple main boys in the novel and they all undergo major character changes through the story. One of them goes crazy, and the another(prenominal)s experience severe attitude changes. ingredient is caught right in the center of these changes. He is very close with all of the other three boys, and thus all of the changes affect him very much.Due to all the tension occurring in this novel because of the war and dismantlets going on at the school, there is a lot of defense mechanism of verity happening. Three of the four boys mentioned earlier deny the truth at some epoch in the story. This denying of truth sometimes demolitions with the person who committed the fault in a bad condition at the end of the book, and sometimes in good condition. So it pra t be said that there were both positive and disconfirming results for separately of the self-renunciations of the truth, but these will be explained more in-depth in the following paragraphs.Although it starts after half the book is finished, one of the major examples of denying the truth in the novel is Finny denying the reality of the war. Though it is disclosed at the end that Finny knew all along ab come forth the war, he succeeds, after a little time, in making divisor truly believe in the non-existence of the war (although Gene claims that he did non really believe the story, his bearing around his classmates and his actions say otherwise). The first result we see of this denial is Finnys confession of his bitterness towards the foundation because of his loss.This destroys the image we birth of Finny as a perfect person because it shows that he blames the world for his accident. It also stuns Gene so much that he begins to do pull-ups, even though he has never done ev en ten before. With Finnys verbal help, Gene manages to do thirty. This solidifies the friendship between them. subsequently this moment, Finny decides to take Gene into his confidence and tells him he wanted to go to the 1944 Olympics, but that Gene will have to go instead, and goes on to start training Gene.Finally, after many a(prenominal) mornings of unassailable training, Gene finally finds his rhythm. Superficially, it arsehole be said that due to Finnys ruse ab show up the war, Gene became very athletic. A deeper study shows that the chance is much more meaningful than this. It symbolizes Gene coming into his own. The author writes that Finny seemed older that morning? he seemed smaller too. Or perhaps it was only that I, inside the homogeneous body, had felt myself all at once grown bigger. It may also be said that on this morning Finny (a model of athleticism) became part of Gene.So, it can be seen that Finnys denying the reality of the war was truly one of the more i mportant examples of denial of truth in the novel because it resulted in, among other things, a great bonding between Finny and Gene and shattered the image of Finny being truly composed and serene. Another example of denial of truth would be Leper. Leper, as is apparent throughout the story, continuously denies reality. He is very often be in his own ? dream world, and when he isnt he is shy and hesitant to show his true feelings.This was likely because he was difficult not to make fun of. For example, at the beginning of the book, when he claims Genes jump was fail than Finnys and is rebutted by Finny, he didnt argue or refuse. He didnt back apart. He became inanimate. There are also many examples of his not being conscious of his surroundings. One of them is when Gene is thinking about him when he sees him on his way to clearing railroads. Gene recalls that while most of the boys are listening to the announcements, Leper made little sketches of birds and trees in the back of his wrinklebook.Then, when Gene strolls up to talk to Leper, Leper comments about go paths. Someone choosing to ski over dower clear a major railroad in the middle of the greatest war of all time is quite odd. He is not even skiing anywhere in particular, just skiing to see nature. He also disagrees strongly with downhill skiing, because it takes away from viewing nature. He thinks that only nature matters and the ideal world is as peaceful and going as slowly as he is. Later on, when Leper is considering trades unioning the army, we see more of this denial of reality.He chooses to join a branch of the army that he once thought ruined skiing. He positively believes that when he enlists he will spend all of his time skiing down slopes. This shows that he does not truly understand the seriousness of the issue. Although the positive points of Lepers denial of truth are much smaller than the negative ones, they do exist. Due to his denial of truth early on in the book, Leper went partially touched(predicate) near the end of the book, but it can be seen at many points in the book that Leper finally gained some assertiveness and shed aside his timid personality.The next example of denial of truth is Finnys denial of the evil in other people. Finny represents the goodness that is in human beings. Because he is so good, he has difficulty understanding how other people can have evil in them. This denial of truth gets him into a sorry state at the end of the book. There is an indication of his truthfulness early on in the book, when Gene comments that Finny always said what he happened to be thinking, and if this shocked people thusly he was surprised. Finny is the guy who is always calm and nice.He is so surprised when Gene confesses to him that he purposely caused Finny to fall out of the tree that he refuses to even believe Gene, and calls him a damn fool. Even former to this, when Gene sees Finny in the school infirmary, Finny tells Gene about how he thoug ht that there might have been some foul play up in the tree when he fell, then immediately apologizes to Gene for having that feeling without even waiting for Gene to check the legitimacy of this feeling. Afterwards, on the first day of the actual school year, Finny calls Gene to talk to him.When Gene claims that he was crazy and over the falls, Finny doesnt refute this, and even goes as far as to apologize once again for thinking that Gene was perfectly serious. With his open, honest nature, Finny cannot truly sham that Gene, who he considers his best friend, pushed him off the tree. Finnys reluctance here can also be compared to another incident in the book. After hearing about Leper going crazy, Finny says, I guess I always knew about the war, but I didnt have to admit it. Finny knows that Gene really had caused the accident, but he refuses to admit it and represses it so much that he literally forgets about it.Thus, when Brinker organizes the trial and it is turn out (with ev idence from Leper) that Gene did cause him to fall, it devastates Finny, and he rushes out of the Assembly Room, slips on the marble stairs, breaks his leg, and later, dies. However, if Finny had not denied the truth about evil in others and had openly challenged Gene, then the story would be much different, and Gene would not have gone through the serious mental development that he did. The final example of denial of truth in the story is Genes reluctance to acknowledge the evil in him.There are many examples in the story other than Gene pushing Finny out of the tree that show the evil in Gene. Gene feels a lot of resentment towards Finny for all the things that Finny gets away with. One of these things is when Finny wears his pinko emblem to school classes. He is questioned by the sternest of the Summer Session masters, old Mr. Patch-Withers, but gets away with it. Gene even admits that Finnys ability to get out of trouble makes him envious, but claims that it is okay to be jealo us of a friend, but the next incident proves otherwise.Finny often wears ties to replace belts, but on the day of the bound tea makes the mistake of wearing the school tie as a belt. When Mr. Patch-Withers sees this, Gene becomes unexpectedly excited because Finny wasnt going to get away with it. When Finny does not get in trouble, Gene is disappointed and says, Phineas was going to get away with even this. Genes reluctance to acknowledge the evil in him is turn out later in the book when Leper says that Gene ? always was a savage underneath and Gene kicks the chair out from underneath him.Gene cannot accept the truth. In this way he is similar to Finny, although the reason why is completely different. Because Gene cannot believe that there is evil in him, he tries to tell himself that everybody else is evil and thinks that everyone is out to get him. Because he believes this, when Finny breaks the school swimming record, and refuses to tell anyone or do it officially, Gene says h e is too good to be true. This is because Finnys behavior contradicts Genes perception of Finny as having evil in him and it shocks Gene.Another time when Genes true viewpoint is shown is when he asks Finny if he would pass if he got the highest mark in the class. Finny replies, with obvious sarcasm, Id kill myself out of jealous envy, but Gene takes it completely seriously, and hides his true feelings from Finny. Gene even acknowledges that he does not know everything that there is to know about him and that there are still hidden part of himself. But he says that these parts could contain the Sad Sack, the outcast or the coward.Gene does not mention the possibility of evil in him here or at any other time before Finnys death. The good and bad points for this denial of truth are very similar to the ones for the previous example. Although Gene does not suffer for his refusal to accept the evil in him, Finny does, but only when he breaks his leg, and not when he dies. All of these people react to their various crises in different ways. For example, Leper emerged from a custodial cloud of vagueness only to meet it? and so give up the struggle absolutely, while Brinker develops a careless general resentment against it.It is interesting to note that all of the examples of denial of truth in the book end with the character in question facing a total attitude change. Leper becomes partially insane and much more assertive. Gene understands his feelings much better and is a changed person. It is like when Finny died some of his serenity entered Gene. Because he denied the wars existence, Finny caused Gene to stay away from all their other friends (Brinker, Chet, etc. ) and only talk to him. With Finnys denying evil in other people it is a little bit more complicated. With each successive fall, it was like Finnys character fell too.For example, after the first fall, the bitterness in Finny was shown and he also knowingly lies to Gene about the war. After the second fall, however, there is a bigger difference. He attempts to hide his pain at the ? trial, but after falling again, he can no longer mask his anger with Gene, and shows this when Gene comes to visit him in the night. He tries to attack Gene, but cannot get out of his bed to get near him. Finny has ? move from his state of perfection and is like a normal person. He does show, however, that he still has the ability to forgive when he sees Gene for the last time.