As children begin to age and minds begin to mature, they are able to understand that the world can be a harsh place filled with crime, death, and war. The older a person gets, the more responsibilities and problems he or she will encounter. Some may never engage in physical warfare, but anyone can struggle with symbolic warfare. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Finny and Gene fight their own war, which has a lot of relation to the war happening in the outside world: World War II. In the course of the plot, Finny and Gene manage to wage their own non-physical war, which contains as many casualties as a real war. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Gene's jealousy of Finny turns their relationship into a battlefield, racking up physical and symbolic casualties along the way. Gene's hatred for Finny causes him to bounce off the tree branch Finny is perched on. Finny, who had a bright future full of athletic opportunities ahead of him, is robbed of his dreams when his leg shatters after falling. Therefore, Finny is the main casualty of Gene's war. The lives lost in a real war could be more than just one, Finny, Gene feels as if his very life has been taken away from him after the death of his best friend. Attending Finny's funeral, Gene says: “I didn't cry then or ever for Finny. I didn't cry as I watched him being lowered into his family's strait [belted cemetery outside Boston. I couldn't escape the feeling that this was my funeral, and then there's no crying” (186). Gene feels like he's been grieving his own death since his best friend was taken away from him and replaced with nothing but emptiness. Their extremely close and affectionate relationship makes them support each other in a way where they complement each other. At one point before the accident, Finny convinces Gene to go to the beach with him by saying, “I hope you're having a great time here. I know, I dragged you away at gunpoint, but after all, you can't come ashore with just anyone… the right person is your best friend, and that's who you are” (40). This shows how much the two boys care about each other; Finny shows a previously unseen vulnerable side as Gene sacrifices his grades to please his friend. The casualties Gene faces are similar to the lives lost during a war because he views Finny's death as his own. During the 1940s, the period in which the novel is set, World War II is a recurring issue that reappears several times. Almost everyone wishes the war would end soon to end the pain and suffering, but many sacrifices must be made along the way to become victorious. In physical wars, soldiers will lose their lives and their families will grieve. The soldiers who survive will live the rest of their lives with painful memories of the war, wishing they could go back and do something different, save someone's life or spare someone else's. In A Separate Peace, Gene also suffers losses, relating to the loss of life in a war. After returning to Devon, Gene does not want to accept the fact that he has paralyzed his best friend for life and avoids certain situations that will catapult him into reality. Gene says he “didn't want to see the trays of snails Leper had collected over the summer replaced by Brinker's archives. Not yet” (75). Seeing how much the room has changed will show Gene that everything has changed and that nothing will ever be the same. He is not ready to admit ihis feelings of guilt. This concerns veterans of real wars because they hesitate to return home for fear of not being able to adapt to their old lifestyle. They are afraid to embrace this new change and refuse to recognize the difference, telling themselves that everything is the same and that nothing has changed. Gene believes he competes with his best friend, Finny, in academic and athletic ability. Finny is always eager to convince Gene to interrupt his studies and break the rules, such as jumping out of trees, instead. Gene attempts to "win" by studying harder and putting in much more effort into his academics to make up for his lesser athletic ability that Finny has. Gene technically wins by killing Finny's chances of becoming an athlete and enlisting in the war when Gene bounces the tree branch Finny is perched on, but Gene considers this victory to be Pyrrhic. He immediately regrets his decision to make his friend fall and shatter his leg. In surgery to fix his leg, Finny dies when a piece of bone marrow floats through his bloodstream to his heart, leaving Gene with no more competition. Gene feels as if a part of himself died along with Finny when his "enemy" died, because taking the life of another takes something away from the killer that they can never regain. Soldiers also feel this similar sense of remorse when they kill another human being on the battlefield; the guilt of depriving someone of his life will follow him for the rest of his life, becoming a new war he may struggle with. Another way soldiers cope with returning home after the traumatic memories they hold is to change their daily routine. Gene does this when he says, “I was late for my afternoon appointment. I was never late. But today I was, even later than I should have been" (75). Here he is avoiding certain situations where he might feel guilty about Finny's leg. Before the accident, Gene was one of, if not the best, students in Devon, but now he is cleansing himself of all the memories and routines related to the war he fought with Finny. Even when victorious in war, the victor will have lost something of value that he can never recover. In wartime, soldiers are confused about who is to blame for their fighting. They are told that they must fight the enemy, but it is difficult to truly know if the opposing side is evil since they are simply fighting for what they believe. Gene's actions in knocking Finny out of the tree are what inevitably lead to Finny's death. death. Some students, like Brinker Hadley, suspect that Gene made Finny fall. Brinker also compares his situation to that of a fallen soldier: “'there's a war going on. Here's a soldier our side has already lost. We need to find out what happened'” (168). He and the other students want to know who is responsible for the incident and who is the enemy. During this investigation, Finny himself even begins to show doubts about Gene's innocence. Both boys are confused about who they can trust and who they should hate. In the last line of the novel, Gene reflects: “I killed my enemy [at school]… all of them, all but Phineas, built at infinite cost these Maginot Lines against this enemy they saw beyond the frontier, this enemy who had never attacked like that, if he ever attacked everyone; if he were really the enemy” (196). This shows how confused Gene is about who the enemy is. At the time of Finny's accident, Gene believed that Finny was his adversary, meaning they were competing to be superior to each other. But now it's unclear to Gene whether his enemy was really Finny, his best friend, or himself,.