Jeff Scudder
Period E
English

	Much symbolism has been placed in the characters of "A Seperate Peace" by John Knowles.  Especially in four of the students who attend the Devon school during the summer session. They are Phineas (Finny), Gene, Leper, and Brinker. Much attention to detail and design went into creating these characters. Each one represents a different personality type. Gene is considered cynic, Leper is a nonconformist, Brinker is an elitist, and Phineas is an iconoclast. Each character has their own special trait in this novel.
	As specified above, Gene is considered to be cynic. This means, he considers everyone in the world to be truly motivated by selfishness. The best example of this is the relationship between Gene and his best friend Phineas. Phineas is very loyal to gene, and he is always helping him and trying to be a good friend. On the contrary, Gene is envious of Phineas. He blames Phineas and resents him. He believes Phineas is the cause for his Academic decline that year. He is jealous of Phineas always getting away with breaking the rules and getting away with it. In Gene's mind, Phineas is motivated my selfishness. He doesn't come to realize that all Phineas is trying to be ia a best friend and accomplice. When Gene pushes Phineas out of  'the tree', shortly after, Gene begins to feel better about himself. This is most likely because he has hurt Phineas, and got whatever "revenge" he sought on him. Even though Phineas never did anything wrong. Gene is the cynical character in the novel.
	Phineas is what you might call an iconoclast. An iconoclast, is a person who attempts or seeks to overthrow or conquer traditions, or age old ideas. This is not a bad thing, it can almost just as easily be aliased as creative, instead of iconoclast. Some examples from the book include: When Phineas takes a pink sash and puts it over his school uniform, to represent his thoughts on the war. This is breaking a rule by not wearing the uniform, and wearing the uniforms correctly is a tradition, which he breaks. Also, Phineas takes a Devon school tie, and uses it for a belt. He makes up a reason for what it represents to get away with breaking this traditional law of the school. Phineas also likes to make up new things, such as Blitzball. A game he makes up where one person has a ball, and runs with it while the others try and catch him. Phines is the creative iconoclast of the story.
	Leper Lepellier, is a nonconformist. This means he does not like to follow the general public. He doesn't keep into styles, or do what everyone else is doing. For example, when everyone else is picking fruits in the orchard to make money, Leper goes to see beaver dams for fun. He doesn't care about making the money. He is also the first to enlist out of these four characters. Leper is also not a very popular kid at Devon, but he doesn't take notice of trends or popularity status because of his personality. Shortly after Leper enters the war, he leaves it. It seems to be to much for him, for he became crazy from the fighing, and got a section 8 discharge from the army.
	Brinker is the elitist of the four students. He is very rich, and it has mainly gone to his head, possibly from how he was brought up. Brinker thinks deep inside, that he himself is better than all of his peers. He thinks he is a person of higher class and stature. Brinker shows this by trying to be a class representative all the time. He is deeply into politics as well. He tried to be sophisticated, so that his friends also view him as better than they are. Brinker always wants to know what is going on, which is why he holds the trial for Gene at the end of the book. He is a character who does not like to be lied to, and he always needs the whole story.
	The four main characters, Brinker, Gene, Phineas, and Leper, all have their ups and downs of their personalities. They are not bad people, even though what they do or how they feel may sometimes look that way. They just each think differently, and the Knowles probably gave each character a personality like this purposely.