When the summer session is coming to an end, it is a symbol for Gene's and Finny's friendship. The friendship that Gene and Finny had was real and right as the summer session ends, their friendship gets torn to pieces and won’t be the same as it was before. After Gene attempted to tell Finny that he deliberately bounced on the branch to make him fall, Gene says to himself that the summer session was almost over. He also says, “... it seemed irresolutely suspended, halted strangely before its time” (Knowles 67). It’s not that the summer session is over forever, it’s that it’s just there and it’ll just always be hanging around. This quote was foreshadowing for their friendship coming to an end. When Gene comes back from visiting his hometown, he decides to go to Finny’s house. Gene says to Finny, “I deliberately jounced the limb so that you would fall off” (Knowles 70). After Gene telling Finny this, Finny wants to make himself believe that this isn’t true. He wants to do this because their friendship was a great thing that they had and the summer session was a little part of their friendship that demonstrated their happiness together. In the poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, it talks about how most things beautiful come to an end. This connects back to A Separate Peace because before the incident with falling off the tree happened, the summer session and Gene’s and Finny’s friendship were symbols for great times with each other and happy moments. However, at some point, those most great moments will come to an end. They won’t be forgotten, but they will be over and it won’t be the same again.
I don't completely agree that the ending of the summer session is a symbol for Gene and Finny's friendship to some to an end. While the memories that Gene and Finny made during the summer session (jumping out of the tree, going to the beach, and playing blitzball) are over, I don't necessarily think that Gene and Finny's friendship is over. I feel that the connection to "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost is that the wonderful times they had during the summer can't stay; now they are back to the regular school session where everyone focuses on the war. Even the way Gene and Finny speak to and act around each other has changed: "... I muttered after both of us had sat in silence for awhile." (Knowles 70) They have become formal with each other, and it seems as though they will have to wait until next summer until they can again be best friends and co-founders of the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session.
ReplyDeleteI agree with charlotte. I think the summer was a symbol of peace like a separate little bubble from the outside of the world. Gene mentions that even the teachers were less strict because the students were "careless and wild" (knowles 24). I think the end of the summer symbolizes an end of that peace and the entrance to the world and the war going on around them.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Eve and Charlotte. I believe that the end of the summer session means the end of their teenage life and on to training for the war. "It was though they felt it especially unfair that it should strike one of the sixteen-year-olds, one of the few young men who could be friend happy in the summer of 1942" (Knowles 61). This quote explains that once the summer of 1942 ends, most of them become seventeen year olds, who are not free anymore. So, the symbolic fact that the summer is coming to an end is that they are not free anymore, and they have to train for the war. This is the end of their free life.
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