Chapter 1 Question 2

Gene is narrating his own story of what happened when he was in high school. How do a. his perspective (1st person narration) and b. the retrospective (looking back and telling the story as if it were present) influence you as a reader and how does it impact the credibility or integrity of the story being told?

The protagonist in A Separate Peace, Gene, narrates and reflects upon events and significant places at his old high school, allowing for readers to experience incidents from both a teenager's and adult's perspective which therefore adds credibility to the story being told. At the beginning of the book, Gene returns to his high school, reflecting upon how the curriculum, students, and school buildings has and has not changed in the fifteen years since he graduated, as well as his growth as a student there in the early 1940's. Gene who wanders around the school visiting important monuments from his boyhood, visits an old tree before explaining, as if it were in the present time, the event that took place at the site and its aftereffect. As Gene is now an adult, he can reflect upon the legitimacy of comments that were made while he was in high school as well as adding wisdom and knowledge on the logic or reason as to why the event took place in the first place, whether a smart choice or not. While the flashback is being told the readers get to hear a teenager's perspective and opinion of the event, adding depth and reliability to the information told as two very different sources are narrating the story. When a young Gene is convinced by his friend Finny to jump off of a tree into water he is nervous, asking himself, "What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this? Was he getting some kind of hold over me?" however when he returns to the school as an adult, he rushes to find the tree, saying he was, "thankful, very thankful that I had seen it...Changed, I headed back through the mud." (page 17 and 14 respectively). Although as a teenager the tree seemed daunting and the action seemed pointless to him, it had a profound affect on Gene as he struggled to find it and explained how much he learned from revisiting it. In this case Gene's opinion of the tree as a teenager was far different than how he viewed the tree as an adult. By including Gene's perspective as both a young man and an adult, a reader can feel more comfortable that the information given is not biased and can have further understanding of the significance, affect and reasons behind any particular event.