Lessons to Be Learned

Emilie Berman

October 25, 2012

English 8                                                              

Lessons to Be Learned

Vernon Law, a baseball player, once said, “Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first, the lesson afterward.” In the novel A Separate Peace, John Knowles, the author, describes life at Devon, a northeastern boarding school, while life outside of Devon is hectic with World War Two going on. While Gene, a student at Devon, and his classmates progress through its school life, it makes many mistakes. John Knowles is able to tie many lessons into his book due to the mistakes that are made. A few lessons he teaches revolve around letting things go, learning to forgive, and accepting hard times. From these lessons the students at Devon learn to become more mature young adults, ready for whatever comes their way in life.

A lesson Finny learns closer to the end of his life is that sometimes one has to accept what is going on around one, especially when one cannot do anything about it. Throughout the book, Finny denies the fact that there is a war going on around him. He says fat old men planned and created the war, and that all the pictures were staged and fake. Finny then learns that Leper went crazy and escaped from army training camp. Finny tells Gene, “When I heard that about Leper, then I knew that the war was real, this war and all the wars. If a war can drive somebody crazy, then it’s real all right” (163). Seeing Leper like this brutally knocked Finny back into the real world. Even though believing that there was no war was much simpler than actually dealing with it, Finny accepts the war, knowing that the only thing traumatizing enough to drive Leper, a kind hearted, innocent adolescent, crazy was in fact a war.

Brinker, unlike Finny, makes much more serious mistakes. From his mistakes he does learn multiple lessons, one being that it is often better to let things go. After Finny breaks his leg from falling out of the tree, many people ignore the break and act like it never happened, to make Finny more comfortable. Brinker, however, often brings up the break, and even at one point mentions how Finny will never be able to go to war. One night, Brinker brings together a group of people in the Assembly Hall to figure out how Finny broke his leg. The whole thing makes Finny and Gene uncomfortable because Brinker begins to blame Gene, Finny’s best friend. Finny then threatens to leave, and Brinker pulls the final straw by saying, “Wait a minute! We haven’t heard everything yet. We haven’t got all the facts” (177).This shows how Brinker just keeps pushing Finny to his last nerve. Finny then leaves in anger, breaking his leg for the last time. From Finny’s broken leg Brinker learns that you should let things go before things go too far, and someone gets hurt.

Finny’s last fall hospitalizes him, but still he is capable of teaching lessons. Finny teaches Gene to always forgive because one never knows what may happen next. While Finny is in the Infirmary, Gene comes to visit him to apologize. Finny accuses him of coming to break something else, so Gene leaves. The next day Gene comes back, to bring Finny’s suit case. Gene apologizes again, and Finny says, “I believe you. It’s okay because I understand and I believe you. You’ve already shown me and I believe you” (pg. 191). Finny could not have possibly known he was going to die that day, but he forgave Gene anyway. He forgives Gene because that is what true friends, which Gene and Finny were, do.

Lessons are not easily forgotten, especially if learned from one’s own mistakes. Letting things go, learning to forgive, and accepting hard times are prominent lessons taught and learned from experience in A Separate Peace. One can never go into the past to fix a mistake that has been made, but they can always learn from the lesson that follows.