Growing out of the adolescent stage at a time period when your country is on the brink of the Second World War, and you are overly sheltered by the confines of a private school, you can definitely bet on maturing in a different manner. In the novel, A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, Gene Forrester grows up that exact way. Gene is a character who flourished in the world of jealously and peer competitiveness, but soon matured into a man with the help of his best friend, Finny. In an essay written in Time magazine, the writer states, "one of the things the novelist seems to be saying is that the enemy Gene killed, and loved, is the one every man must kill; his own youth, the innocence that burns to hotly to be endured." I also agree, with the writer, that at the end of Gene's...