A Separate Peace A quiet, peaceful, nature-loving boy, Leper shocks his classmates by becoming the first boy at Devon to enlist in the army; he shocks them again by deserting soon after.
Full Answer
In John Knowles's A Separate Peace, the boy called 'Leper' is actually named Elwin Lepellier, though in the novel only his mother ever calls him by his proper name.
Both of Leper’s decisions demonstrate important properties of the war: to the students at Devon, it constitutes a great unknown, overshadowing their high school years and rendering their actions mere preparations for a dark future.
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.
The "escape," Leper explains, was from the Army and a section-eight discharge that would have labeled him a "psycho." Laughing hysterically and shouting angrily, Leper tells Gene that his experience has revealed a lot to him about himself and others — especially the "savage underneath" that lurks in Gene.
A Separate Peace Leper is another important minor character in the novel. In fact, he acts as a kind of narrative catalyst, inadvertently bringing about the final tragedy in the novel. The nonconforming loner Leper serves as a contrast to Finny, another nonconformist who nonetheless succeeds as a leader.
After enlisting, Leper was sent to basic training. There the combination of stress, lack of sleep, and bad food eventually caused him to have a mental breakdown, which took the form of frightening hallucinations. As a result, he has deserted.
Saddened by the revelation, Gene wants to find a separate peace again with Finny. But that is no longer possible. With Gene's journey, the war comes to Devon, and the truth about Leper — as well as the truth Leper brings with him — inevitably emerges. Brinker, especially, senses the reality of Leper's situation.
After he is blasted out of his insulated peace, Leper serves as a reminder of reality for the rest of the boys--especially for Gene. Leper is no longer a dreamy refuge from the violence of the world.
He is depicted as the innocent young boy who lives in his own “shell”. However, as the recruiters changes him, his way of thinking changes. The war has changed Leper to become a psychotic, rude and uncontrollable man who cannot think straight.
How did Leper's illness affect Phineas? It made the war real, inescapable. He could no longer pretend there's no war. He realized he would not be a part of it.
Leper declares that Gene pushed Finny out of the tree, because Gene is "a savage underneath." Accused and judged, Gene responds to his own dark instincts, his secret impulses, and knocks Leper from his chair, just as he once pushed Finny from the tree.
Why does Leper accuse Gene of causing Finny's fall? He says Gene was a savage by pushing Finny out the tree.
Leper Speaks Truth. After he is blasted out of his insulated peace, Leper serves as a reminder of reality for the rest of the boys--especially for Gene. Leper is no longer a dreamy refuge from the violence of the world. Now he speaks truth, even when it hurts.
Thus, Leper, in his peaceful innocence, tries to admit the war into his reality. He enlists, and heads off to war 'with his white stocking cap bobbing behind,' as if to highlight one last time the disparity between the peace of Leper's character and the violence into which he now embarks.
Elwin Lepellier (Leper), in his journey from innocence to disillusionment, is a representation of the journey all of the boys in this novel take. At first he is a symbol of boyhood, as contrasted by his career-bound roommate Brinker who is all future.
Many movies and books are about how a traumatic experience can change the attitude and general nature of a person, for good or for bad. Leper is just one example. In John Knowles's A Separate Peace, the boy called 'Leper' is actually named Elwin Lepellier, though in the novel only his mother ever calls him by his proper name.
Leper's Disillusionment. After only a short time in training, Leper escapes from the army. He, like so many other young men in his situation, suffers acute mental distress when faced with the realities of war. He has trouble eating and sleeping, and eventually succumbs to delusions and hallucinations.
After the recruiter's ski troop film, however, Leper changes his tune: 'I guess maybe racing skiers weren't ruining the sport after all. They were preparing it...for the future. Everything has to evolve or else it perishes.' He takes this theory further to conclude, 'I'm almost glad this war came along. It's like a test, isn't it, and only the things and the people who've been evolving the right way survive.'
The War Creeps In. Swayed by a recruiter's images of smil ing ski troops (and also probably motivated by his impending 18th birthday and the likelihood of being drafted). quiet, timid Leper ends up enlisting in the war effort. Previously, he had decried downhill skiing as an abomination.
In a sense, then, Leper’s hallucinations reflect the fears and angst of adolescence, in which the transformation of boys into men—and, in wartime, of boys into soldiers—causes anxiety and inner turmoil.
A Separate Peace. A quiet, peaceful, nature-loving boy, Leper shocks his classmates by becoming the first boy at Devon to enlist in the army; he shocks them again by deserting soon after.
Summary and Analysis Chapter 9. The chapter opens with the enlistment of Leper Lepellier, who decides to join the ski troops. The first recruit from the class, Leper simply makes up his mind and goes quietly, without any fanfare. Brinker begins to connect any triumphal news of the war with Leper, and the Devon students imagine their former ...
He officially opens the Games with "the sacred fire from Olympus" — a copy of the Iliad doused with cider and set ablaze. The boys, excited by the cider, throw themselves into the games, while Finny, atop the prize table, dances on one leg.
Finny presides over the action, which includes a ski jump, a prize table, and jugs of hard cider, guarded by Brinker . At the signal, Chet Douglass blows his trumpet, and the boys attack Brinker to raid the hard cider. In the midst of the riot, Gene pours cider down Brinker's throat, and Brinker declares the Games open.
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.
Finny, it seems, can hold off the war — but only for a while. Still, with the Carnival, he performs his magic once more, creating, through the sheer force of his personality, an afternoon of escape from the worries of the draft and enlistment, an imaginative refuge from the world at war.
Only Finny — who refuses to acknowledge the war, anyway — does not join in celebrating the Leper legend. In contrast to Brinker's sarcastic mock-sagas of the Devon hero, Finny makes his own spontaneous plans for the Winter Carnival, emphasizing energy and freedom — the creation of a new world apart from the world at war.
Summary. In this chapter, Gene travels by train to Leper's house. As he stops for coffee, he concludes that Leper's "escape" must have been from spies. The legend of Leper, created in fun at Devon, seems to have come true. As Gene approaches the house, he notices Leper watching him from a window, not moving even as Gene stands at the front door.
When Gene jokes and lightly teases him, Leper's response is angry, then despairing . Leper has changed, Gene sees, and he begins to understand that his friend has become mentally unbalanced. The "escape," Leper explains, was from the Army and a section-eight discharge that would have labeled him a "psycho.".
Leper declares that Gene pushed Finny out of the tree, because Gene is "a savage underneath.".
Later, on their walk together in the snow after lunch, Leper confides his delusions to Gene, and this conversation recalls the scene (in Chapter 9) when Finny reveals his vision of the fake war conspiracy to Gene.
Agitated and defensive, Leper spits out the word he imagines Gene is thinking — "psycho."
When Gene opens the door himself, Leper appears and ushers him into the dining room — the only place, he tells Gene, where "you never wonder what's going to happen.".
Now, as he travels through the night, Gene thinks about Leper's telegram, wondering — in a fantasy that rivals Finny's conspiracy theory about the war — if his friend's "escape" is really from wartime spies. Even the description of the remote Vermont area where Leper lives — and has now retreated — emphasizes this sense of danger, with its bitter cold and wind, its snow and isolation. It is, to Gene's mind, a "death landscape."
A Separate Peace: The Where and When. A Separate Peace is one of John Knowles' most notable books. The coming-of-age novel deals with many issues associated with the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and its setting plays into that theme in a big way.
Time is significant to A Separate Peace primarily because it shows the different perspectives of the same character during two periods of his life and what experience has taught him about the world and himself.
A Separate Peace is set at the Devon School in New Hampshire, a place considered Edenic because of its peaceful and isolated location; a place separated from the realities the rest of the country was experiencing during World War II.
Setting, like other aspects of literary study, plays an important role in narrative. Think, for example, of the importance of where and when you eat. It would be pretty bizarre to eat your breakfast under the kitchen table at two o'clock in the morning, especially if you were to be discovered by someone. It might illustrate something about your mental state. Imagine the assumptions they might make!
Gene returns to Devon from Leper’s house and finds Finny in the midst of a snowball fight, which he has organized. Gene hesitates to join the fight but Finny draws him in. Gene asks Finny, who now uses a walking cast, if he is allowed to participate in such strenuous activities. Finny replies that he thinks he can feel his bones getting better.
The snowball fight that greets Gene upon his arrival constitutes yet another example of what defines Finny: his anarchic vibrancy and his love of pure sport, free of winners and losers. Although the snowy chaos seems to testify to the durability of Finny’s spirit, his power diminishes over the course of the chapter.