Essay On Leper In A Separate Peace By John Knowles
483 Words2 Pages
In A Separate Peace, readers may be blinded to how significant a low-key character can be. Unnoticeable and unpopular, Leper plays a vital role in the novel written by John Knowles. With Leper’s innocent, kind, old soul and solitary personality, he becomes the one who experiences the tragic realization of how treacherous the world can be. Leper is the kind of person who voluntarily keeps to himself. However, he does consider Gene to be one of his best friends. Leper is not considered popular but he does not pay attention to such things so it does not bother him. He is always off looking for beaver dams, photographing snails, skiing, or off in nature. The fact that Leper has an innocent view of the world makes him vulnerable and weaker than the others. He usually has to defend his way of thinking, "I just like to go along and see what I'm passing and enjoy myself." (87) Leper has always been an avid skier. After watching a video of ski troops, he is the first to enlist from Devon a few weeks away from turning eighteen. Everyone is taken by surprise because it is rather uncharacteristic of him. Before enlisting, Leper never realizes how the war can affect you as a person. Meanwhile, in the Butt Room, Brinker brought in newspapers with headlines about the war and joked about Leper’s success in the army. “Leper sprang up all over the world at the…show more content… When Gene arrives at Leper’s house in Vermont, he walks in to see a side of Leper he never knew existed. Leper becomes violent, which has never happened before. He suffers a mental breakdown and starts hallucinating, which scares Gene off. Coming back from war the way Leper did proved that the war can kill the body and spirit. It corrupted his view of the world. “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 to survive”