In the fiction of the '50s, adolescents emerged as the ultimate individuals — people who constantly tested the rules or sought to live without them. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of Catcher in the Rye, aimlessly wanders New York after being expelled (again) from prep school. The British boys of Lord of the Flies, shipwrecked on an island, create their own unique combination of anarchy and tyranny when the structure of their conventional world collapses.
In contrast, the characters of A Separate Peace remain within the defining and confining world of their prep school, where wealth and privilege enforce high expectations for conventional behavior. The main characters, Gene and Finny, carve out their own world within the school, taking advantage of a relatively casual summer semester, when the masters loosen their grip on the boys. The world of Devon's Summer Session becomes their personal paradise, which, like the biblical Eden, comes to an end with a tree and a fall.
Finny's fall from the tree and Gene's fall from innocence can be traced to unresolved tensions in Gene over conformity and individuality, created by the mixed feeling of envy and admiration he feels for Finny. A true individual, Finny enjoys pure freedom, an inspired, natural flow of energy that expresses itself in his athletic strength and grace. Gene, in contrast, feels the constraints of conformity, obedience, and responsibility. As a hard-working, serious student, Gene resents Finny's effortless life and especially his good nature.
Motivated, then, by envy and resentment, Gene causes Finny to fall from a high limb and break his leg, ending his friend's sports career and, ultimately, his life. After the fall, Gene's unacknowledged guilt haunts him, then moves him to painful self-knowledge, and at last to a peace that lights his way into adulthood.
