A Separate Peace Quotes?

Question

I need some help explaining these quotes..if you can only explain one thats fine i just need help!!

1.“You always were a savage underneath…like that time when you knocked Finny out of the tree”(137/145).

2.“The army has the perfect word for everything, did you ever think of that?...And the perfect word

for me…psycho. I guess I am. I must be. Am I though, or is the army? Because they turned

everything inside out” (141/149-150).

3.“But by now I no longer needed this vivid false identity; now I was acquiring, I felt, a sense for

my own real authority and worth, I had had many new experiences and I was growing up”

(148/156).

4.“There was no rush to get into fighting….The thing to be was careful and self-preserving. It was

going to be a long war” (151/159).

Gene is put on trial for knocking Finny out of the tree and is forced to face his wrongdoing (156-

169/165-177)

.

5.Finny breaks his leg a second time by falling down the stairs (169/177).

6.“You want to break something else in me! Is that why you’re here?” (176/184).

7.“We members of the Class of 1943 were moving very fast toward the war now, so fast that there

were casualties even before we reached it, a mind was clouded and a leg was broken – maybe

these should be thought of as minor and inevitable mishaps in the accelerating rush. The air

around us was filled with much worse things” (179/187-188).

8.“I’ll hate it everywhere if I’m not in this war! Why do you think I kept saying there wasn’t any

war all winter?” (182/190).

9.“No, I don’t know how to show you, how can I show you, Finny? Tell me how to show you. It

was just some ignorance inside me, some crazy thing inside me, something blind, that’s all it

was” (183/191).

10.Finny accepts his apology allowing Gene to achieve peace (183/191).

11.Finny dies because of bone marrow escaping into his blood system and traveling to his heart

(185/193).

12.“I did not cry then or ever about Finny.…I could not escape a felling that this was my own

funeral, and you do not cry in that case” (186/194).

13.“It’s your greatest moment, greatest privilege, to serve your country. We’re all proud of you, and

we’re all – old guys like me – we’re all darn jealous of you too” (192/200).

14.“He and his crowd are responsible for it! And we’re going to fight it!” (193/201).

15.“Because it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities,

but wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart” (193/201).

16.“I was ready for the war, now that I no longer had any hatred to contribute to it. My fury was

gone, I felt it gone, dried up at the source, withered and lifeless. Phineas had absorbed it and

taken it with him, and I was rid of it forever” (195/203).

17.“I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because

my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed

my enemy there (196/204).

18.“Only Phineas never was afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone….All of them, all except

Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they

thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way – if ever attacked at

all; if he was indeed the enemy” (196/204).

Answer 1

Okay. I don't get any of them. Sorry.

Answer 2

There's too many to explain every single one, but look at them in context. It helps. I'll give you a hint on the first one.

1. Leper is confronting Gene about his jealousy and cynicism towards others and the world. Gene has trouble taking things for face value, such as Phineas's innocence, which ultimately results in his death. This quote also shows Gene's inabiliy to confront his mistakes. Therefore, it is a powerful quote for the theme of denial in the character of Gene.