108and "psycho" and "sulfa," strange words like that with endings like Latin nouns. The newsreelsand magazines were choked with images of blazing artillery and bodies half sunk in the sand ofa beach somewhere. We members of the Class of 1943 were moving very fast toward the warnow, so fast that there were casualties even before we reached it, a mind was clouded and a legwas broken—maybe these should be thought of as minor and inevitable mishaps in theaccelerating rush. The air around us was filled with much worse things.In this way I tried to calm myself as I walked with Finny's suitcase toward the Infirmary.After all, I reflected to myself, people were shooting flames into caves and grilling otherpeople alive, ships were being torpedoed and dropping thousands of men in the icy ocean,whole city blocks were exploding into flame in an instant. My brief burst of animosity, lastingonly a second, a part of a second, something which came before I could recognize it and wasgone before I knew it had possessed me, what was that in the midst of this holocaust?I reached the Infirmary with Finny's suitcase and went inside. The air was laden withhospital smells, not unlike those of the gym except that the Infirmary lacked that sense of spenthuman vitality. This was becoming the new background of Finny's life, this purely medicalelement from which bodily health was absent.The corridor happened to be empty, and I walked along it in the grip of a kind of fatalexhilaration. All doubt had been resolved at last. There was a wartime phrase coming into stylejust then—"this is it"—and although it later became a parody of itself, it had a final flataccuracy which was all that could be said at certain times. This was one of the times: this wasit.I knocked and went in. He was stripped to the waist, sitting up in bed leafing through amagazine. I carried my head low by instinct, and I had the courage for only a short glance athim before I said quietly, "I've brought your stuff.""Put the suitcase on the bed here, will you?" The tone of his words fell dead center, withouta trace of friendliness or unfriendliness, not interested and not bored, not energetic and notlanguid.I put it down beside him, and he opened it and began to look through the extra underwearand shirts and socks I had packed. I stood precariously in the middle of the room, trying to findsomewhere to look and something to say, wanting desperately to leave and powerless to do so.Phineas went carefully over his clothes, apparently very calm. But it wasn't like him to checkwith such care, not like him at all. He was taking a long time at it, and then I noticed that as hetried to slide a hairbrush out from under a flap holding it in the case his hands were shaking sobadly that he couldn't get it out. Seeing that released me on the spot."Finny, I tried to tell you before, I tried to tell you when I came to Boston that time—""I know, I remember that." He couldn't, after all, always keep his voice under control."What'd you come around here for last night?""I don't know." I went over to the window and placed my hands on the sill. I looked down at
109them with a sense of detachment, as though they were hands somebody had sculptured and puton exhibition somewhere. "I had to." Then I added, with great difficulty, "I thought I belongedhere."I felt him turning to look at me, and so I looked up. He had a particular expression which hisface assumed when he understood but didn't think he should show it, a settled, enlightenedlook; its appearance now was the first decent titling I had seen in a long time.He suddenly slammed his fist against the suitcase. "I wish to God there wasn't any war."I looked sharply at him. "What made you say that?""I don't know if I can take this with a war on. I don't know.""If you can take—""What good are you in a war with a busted leg!""Well you—why there are lots—you can—"He bent over the suitcase again. "I've been writing to the Army and the Navy and theMarines and the Canadians and everybody else all winter. Did you know that? No, you didn'tknow that. I used the Post Office in town for my return address. They all gave me the sameanswer after they saw the medical report on me. The answer was no soap. We can't use you. Ialso wrote the Coast Guard, the Merchant Marine, I wrote to General de Gaulle personally, Ialso wrote Chiang Kai-shek, and I was about ready to write somebody in Russia."I made an attempt at a grin. "You wouldn't like it in Russia.""I'll hate it everywhere if I'm not in this war! Why do you think I kept saying there wasn'tany war all winter? I was going to keep on saying it until two seconds after I got a letter fromOttawa or Chungking or some place saying, 'Yes, you can enlist with us.'" A look of pleasedachievement flickered over his face momentarily, as though he had really gotten such a letter."Then there would have been a war.""Finny," my voice broke but I went on, "Phineas, you wouldn't be any good in the war, evenif nothing had happened to your leg."A look of amazement fell over him. It scared me, but I knew what I said was important andright, and my voice found that full tone voices have when they are expressing something longfeltand long-understood and released at last. "They'd get you some place at the front andthere'd be a lull in the fighting, and the next thing anyone knew you'd be over with theGermans or the Japs, asking if they'd like to field a baseball team against our side. You'd besitting in one of their command posts, teaching them English. Yes, you'd get confused andborrow one of their uniforms, and you'd lend them one of yours. Sure, that's just what wouldhappen. You'd get things so scrambled up nobody would know who to fight any more. You'dmake a mess, a terrible mess, Finny, out of the war."
- Page 1 and 2:
1John KnowlesA Separate Peace
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4Devon was both scholarly and very
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6sprang out, fell through the tops
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8a kitchen rattle from the wing of
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10true and sincere; Finny always sa
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12Withers, perched nervously behind
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14of the great northern forests. I
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163Yes, he had practically saved my
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18Up the field the others at badmin
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20that Finny could shine at it. He
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22"You can try it again and break i
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24tonks and shooting galleries and
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26But Finny gave me little time to
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28was weakened by the very genuinen
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30"Don't go." He said it very simpl
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325None of us was allowed near the
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34The door was slightly ajar, and I
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36We found it fairly easily, on a s
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38"Sure, I'll be there by Thanksgiv
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40Still it had come to an end, in t
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42"How many?""Who knows? Get some.
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44The houses on either side were in
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46"No, I wouldn't.""And I spent my
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48"What?" I pulled quickly around i
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50They laughed at him a little, and
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52"I'm not sure, Leper, but I think
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54After they had gone we laborers l
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56To enlist. To slam the door impul
- Page 58 and 59: 588"I can see I never should have l
- Page 60 and 61: 60"So," Brinker curled his lip at m
- Page 62 and 63: 62So the war swept over like a wave
- Page 64 and 65: 64We went into the gym, along a mar
- Page 66 and 67: 66you at the Funny Farm.""In a way,
- Page 68 and 69: 68large rambling, doubtfully Coloni
- Page 70 and 71: 709This was my first but not my las
- Page 72 and 73: 72Giraud but Lepellier; we knew, be
- Page 74 and 75: 74"Who wants a Winter Carnival?" he
- Page 76 and 77: 76Still the sleek brown head bent m
- Page 78 and 79: 78ELWIN LEPER LEPELLIER.
- Page 80 and 81: 80escapes from is danger, death, th
- Page 82 and 83: 82"That's what you say. But that's
- Page 84 and 85: 84a good boy underneath," she must
- Page 86 and 87: 86the Mess Hall, I had to eat every
- Page 88 and 89: 88"How's Leper?" he asked in an off
- Page 90 and 91: 90I didn't say anything."He must be
- Page 92 and 93: 92never will.""You're so wrong I ca
- Page 94 and 95: 94I believed you," he added hurried
- Page 96 and 97: 96acoustics in the school. I couldn
- Page 98 and 99: 98the tree did it by itself. It's a
- Page 100 and 101: 100"Here! Go get him," said Brinker
- Page 102 and 103: 102"I can't think of the name of th
- Page 104 and 105: 104Dr. Stanpole stopped near the do
- Page 106 and 107: 106hurt my stomach and I could feel
- Page 110 and 111: 110His face had been struggling to
- Page 112 and 113: 11213The quadrangle surrounding the
- Page 114 and 115: 114Brinker slid his fingers into th
- Page 116 and 117: 116At the gym a platoon was undress
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