Knowles Separate Peace Essays: Character Traits :: Separate Peace Essays

Character Traits in A Separate Peace   In the book A Separate Peace by John Knowles, adeptness of the main themes is the effects of realism, idealism, and isolationism on Brinker, Phineas, and Gene.  Though not everyone can be described using one of these climb upes to brio, the approaches completely conform to these characters to create one realist, one idealist, and one isolationist thereby providing the foundation of the novel. The realist is Brinker.  Brinkers realism takes on a very morbid quality after Gene decides not to enlist with him, do to Phineass return to Devon.  Brinker still sees everything the way it is, but begins to conceive that the way it is, is bad.  On page 122, he is quoted as saying, Frankly, I just dont see anything to celebrate, winter or spring or anything else.  Brinker will audit any incident until he senses a dark side to it, because, in his mind, at least one side of everything is a dark side.  already we have t he footing for our climax.          Phineas (Finny) is the idealist.  Like Brinker, Finnys approach experiences a grim metamorphoses. in the lead his accident, Finny sees the world as a glorious playing field and life as a never ending game. After his accident however, Finny begins to mountain the world through the eyes of a paranoid old humanity who is always seeing something covert in everything.  On page 106, Finny take down goes as far as to ask Gene, Do you really hypothesize that the United States of America is in a state of war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan?  This outlook is a mental facade that moreover succeeds in setting Finny up for a harder fall.          Finally there is the isolationist, Gene.  Genes approach is austere from the beginning.  It is Gene who generates the dark change in the others.  Gene looks for riskiness in everything he is emotionally close to.&nbs p When he finds danger, he ostracizes himself from whatsoever it is that is posing a threat to him.  If he can not find danger, as with Finny, he creates it.  On page 45 he strives so hard to create danger in Finny that he falsely concludes that, Finny had by design set out to wreck my studies.  This creates the storys