Everyone has a specific object or place that immediately floods them with memories. Whether it's the stretch of road they crashed into or the pencil they used to take a huge test, these items are everywhere. The memories they hold can be painful or joyful, a beginning or an end, but what each object or place has in common is that it has meaning beyond what we see. One such symbol in John Knowles' A Separate Peace, particularly for Gene Forrester and Finny, is the tree along the bank of the River Devon. Although it may look like any other tree on the river bank to most people, to students in Devon in 1942 it symbolized many things. The tree serves several purposes in the novel A Separate Peace, some of which symbolize friendship, fear, and youth. One of the main things that the tree in a separate room symbolizes is the friendship and bond formed only through abnormal activity. For Gene and Finny in particular, this action involves jumping into the river from the tree. From this link is born the “Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session”. Gene describes the formation of the company when he recalls: “Stiff, I began to climb the ladder, slightly reassured to have Finny right behind me. “We’re going to jump together to solidify our partnership,” [Finny] said. “We are going to form a suicidal society, and the membership requirements are a jump out of that tree.” “A suicidal society,” I said stiffly. “The Suicide Society of the Summer Session” (Knowles 31). The tree serves as a way to bond Gene and Finny even more than before, as explained in how they cement their partnership. Without the tree to jump from, there would never be society and Gene and Finny will never experience the bond created during their jumps from the tree. While the idea of ​​jumping from the tree bonds the two friends, the first jump puts Gene in debt to Finny, which saves Gene from a drastic fall from the tree. , so Gene is eternally grateful to Finny. Gene realizes this fact when he reflects: "If Finny hadn't come up right behind me...if he hadn't been there...I could have fallen over the bank and broken my back." I had fallen quite clumsily, I could have been killed. Finny had practically saved my life” (Knowles 32). Although Gene isn't happy, Finny even forced him to get up and so he doesn't give him much of an outward expression of gratitude. the sequence of events that created the company and Finny saving Gene solidifies the special bond between the two. They're into something bigger than their feelings for each other. Even though the Suicide Society is short-lived and largely inconsequential, their bond becomes much stronger than just being normal friends. Gene stays by Finny's side until the end while Finny is on his deathbed for reasons other than the simple fact that he ultimately caused his death. He didn't stay out of pity or a sense of duty, Gene remains steadfast even when Finny pushes him away, because he loves Finny. Gene and Finny are not friends, they are brothers because of a simple friendship that cements and blossoms into something more through the experiences they share, many of which occur because of the tree. bank of the River Devon. If friendships flourish thanks to the tree, fear also has its roots in the tree and in the experiences it recounts during the summer session of 1942. Ultimately, Gene is afraid of what he has become , but it all started with fear of his best friend. Gene describes his delusional anger and animosity toward Finny when he recalls, “I found only one abiding thought. The thought was that you and Phineas already are. You are even hostile... Finny had deliberately decided to destroy mystudies… which explained his insistence that I share all his distractions… It was all a cold deception, it was all calculated, it was all enmity” (Knowles 53). Gene accuses Finny of trying to hurt Gene, but this feeling comes from jealousy and a deep, hidden fear that Finny really is much better than him. Gene has to console himself and justify his anger towards Finny somehow, and he chooses to do so in a way that frames Finny. All the pent-up disgust and anger towards Finny boils over when, jumping out of the tree with Finny once again, Gene says, "...my knees buckled and I popped the limb." Finny, whose balance was gone… rolled over onto his side… and hit the bank with a nauseating, unearthly thud. With reckless certainty I stepped forward onto the branch and jumped into the river, all trace of my fear forgotten” (Knowles 59-60). Gene is afraid for himself and what Finny is supposed to try to do to him, so he makes the decision to push him. Not only does he alter Finny's life with a single action, but he feels nothing afterward, jumping into the river without any emotion. Gene lets his emotions get the better of him and control him, such as the jealousy he's always had for Finny leading to the fear that Finny will take away the one thing Gene has the advantage in: his studies. Gene recognizes this when he finally admits: "I have never killed anyone and I have never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy." Because my war ended before I even put on a uniform; I was on active duty all the time at school; I killed my enemy there. Only Phineas was never afraid, only Phineas never hated anyone” (Knowles 204). The fear of betrayal that Gene feels toward Finny culminates at the tree, and for this reason, the tree can be seen as a means of bringing out the fear of others and of one's own inner thoughts and beliefs. The last thing the tree symbolizes in A Separate Peace is youth. The entire story is told as a flashback when Gene revisits Devon several years later, and many of his first thoughts begin with the tree and how it grew on the same branches that are dying. Gene's main thought is described when he thinks: "It was the tree, and it seemed to me like those men, the giants of your childhood, that you meet years later and you notice that they are not only smaller compared to their childhood. your growth, but that they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion, the old giants became pygmies while you looked away” (Knowles 14). Gene thinks the tree symbolizes how he has matured since his time in Devon. He and all his friends were just boys during their time there, and the fact that their youth was so significant puts even more emphasis on the fact that they were sent to war less than a year after the flashback Gene has. . The decaying tree shows how something that was once an accomplishment to jump from is now dying, and the memories created there are fading with it. Everyone grew up so close to that tree, from Finny's life being transformed to Gene realizing that a small part of him has always had disdain for Finny's charisma and apparent perfection. This tree represents milestones and major events in the lives of all the boys who attended Devon during the summer term of 1942. It symbolizes the war as students prepared themselves by jumping from it. It symbolizes tragedy, but it also symbolizes joy and freedom. The tree at the edge of