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Cameron Talley Exact Date Unknown, Sometime Early in Sophomore Year
Through motifs, the author of A Separate Peace, John Knowles, draws the contrasting nature of the idealist and realist by presenting Finny and Gene's conflicting ideas on how to deal with life, if they comprehend it, and how the deal with the reality of war. First, Knowles shows the true opposites that the realist and idealists manifest through Gene and Finny's dealings with life. Early in the novel, before Finny's accident, Finny decides to go to the beach with Gene following him. There, Gene dives in for a swim, but the waves overpower him, bully him. Gene struggles, but cannot regain control, and the waves toss him onto the beach. This water imagery is a metaphor for how gene handles life. He tries to "flow" with life, but his efforts are against, not with, and life chews him up and spits him out. On the other side of the table, Finny, the idealist, is in harmony with life. Gene, glancing at the Devon river, thinks of Phineas, "...balancing on one foot on the prow of a canoe like a river god..."(67). Again, water is life, and Finny's balancing act proves that he can carefully balance all of life's events. He is like a god of life, in perfect harmony with the river of time. Furthermore, Knowles presents how finny, the idealist, embraces life where as gene, the realist, fights it. Finny and Gene end up spending the night at the beach. Gene, awakening, remarks of the morning sunrise, "It began not as the gorgeous fanfare over the ocean I Had expected, but as a strange gray thing, like sunshine seen through burlap"(41). Gene views not only the sunrise, but life in general as a strange thing. He does not understand it, and therefore is actually afraid of it, so he resists and battles against it. Later, Gene observes the change in the Sky as Phineas awakes. The fuller awake Finny is, the brighter thand clearer it gets. Finny understands that he has to embrace, love, and enjoy life to its fullest. He lets life bully him, and he likes it. the idealist is always happier than the realist. Of mostr importance, the author conveys how the idealist and the realist deall with the reality of war. At the conclusion of the nove;, Gene is gazinfg back at the wqar and the life he Led after his Graduation. He remarks that he had been on "active duty" while at the school, and that he killed his enemy theere. Gene is looking back, not in confusion, but in understanding He accepts the facts, accepts that he killed his "enemy" and now that he accepts that, he can move on. Finny, on the other hand, has trouble dealing with the reality of it all. Not long after he returns from healing after the first accident, He remarks that tjhe war is fake. He claims that a group of fatr men are behind it all, coming up withthe next "victory" of "invasion". Finny cannot grasp the hard, cold facts about the war, so he invents a lie to lelieve instead. To him, this lie is the war. What the realist readily accepts, the idealist can never fathom. In this writing, John Knowles has shown us the opposites that the idealist and realist are. In life, we can either be one or the other; perhaps this has helped us choose which one we should be. |