As this chapter opens, Gene explains that his own happiness, rather than a belief in Finny's conspiracy theory, created a kind of peace for him during that winter when the rest of the world was at war. This theme of a personal sense of peace — the "separate peace" of the title — will reach its climax with Finny's Winter Carnival.
Even Leper's sudden enlistment seems not to affect the separate peace of Devon — at least for a while. When Leper watches a war recruitment film, he becomes dazzled by the angelic images of soldiers skiing across the virgin snow. Once a dedicated, slow-moving "touring" skier, Leper now longs to speed downhill, despite the danger. In fact, he changes his mind not only about the war, but about skiing, too, drawing the connection between sports and war that Finny has been fighting for months.
When Leper enlists as the first volunteer from Devon, he disappears, almost without a word, into the world of war. The silence surrounding Leper's leave-taking and the lack of information about his part in the war encourages wildly imaginative tales that Brinker weaves into the Leper legend. The hapless Leper, Brinker jokes, must be the hero behind all the victories the Devon boys read about in the papers — a kind of ubiquitous Kilroy.
