Self-Examination A Separate Peace opens as Gene Forrester returns to the Devon School, a New England prep school, about fifteen years ago after being educated there. World War II had just begun and he remembers the Summer Suicide Society, an organization founded by his best friend, Finny, dedicated to initiating its members by having them jump from the tree into the river. Gene and Finny always had to make the first jump from the tree. Over time, Gene begins to resent Finny because of his athletic skills, and on one occasion he jumps on the limb so that Finny falls. Finny's leg is broken, preventing him from playing sports, but Finny refuses to believe that Gene could have done this, even though Gene admits to it. When Finny returns to school, he wants to make Gene a good athlete for the 1944 Olympics. As one of many examples of opposing elements contrasted with each other, Gene tells Finny that sports don't is not important because of the war, which Finny refuses to believe. A little later, some boys from the prep school take Gene and Finny to a large meeting room, where they want to clear up the matter of Finny's broken leg. Gene realizes he is being judged, Finny refuses to answer questions because he trusts his friend, Finny leaves the room agitated, slips down the stairs and breaks the same leg again. At the hospital, Finny has a change of attitude and asks Gene why he pushed him out of the tree. Gene says this act was a blind impulse. Later that day, Finny dies when some Q~i~ bone marrow enters his bloodstream. Looking back on this experience, Gene reflects that he was never very interested in war because he was fighting his own personal war between accepting the clearly defined values ​​of prep school and Finny's laid-back values. He had killed his enemy at school. Knowles' book focuses on the adolescent period of life. Adolescence is a very confusing time of life, mainly because a person oscillates between wanting to be a child and being innocent, and then wanting to be an adult and questioning life. Knowles points out that the two lifeworlds of adolescents and adults share many similarities and often overlap: they are not separate entities. Even in the green, well-kept paradise of the Devon School there were some areas of uncontrolled wilderness..