Name________________________________________________ Period_____English 9 Honors – Mrs. Zupo

A Separate Peace – excerpted from Chapter 8

I could hardly believe it, but it was too plainly printed in the closed expression of his face to mistake, too discernible beneath the even tone of his voice: Phineas was shocked at the idea of my leaving. In some way he needed me. He needed me. I was the least trustworthy person he had ever met. I knew that; he knew or should know that too. I had even told him. I had told him. But there was no mistaking the shield of remoteness in his face and voice. He wanted me around. The war then passed away from me, and dreams of enlistment and escape and a clean start lost their meaning for me.

“Sure you can manage the shower all right,” I said, “but what difference does it make? Come on. Brinker’s always … Brinker’s always getting there first. Enlist! What a nutty idea. It’s just Brinker wanting to get there first again. I wouldn’t enlist with you if you were General MacArthur’s eldest son.”

Brinker reared back arrogantly. “And who do you think I am!” But Finny hadn’t heard that. His face had broken into a wide and dazzled smile at what I had said, lighting up his whole face. “Enlist!” I drove on, “I wouldn’t enlist with you if you were Elliott Roosevelt.”

“First cousin,” said Brinker over his chin, “once removed.”

“He wouldn’t enlist with you,” Finny plunged in, “if you were Madame Chiang Kai-shek.”

“Well,” I qualified in an undertone, “he really is Madame Chiang Kai-shek.”

“Well fan my brow,” cried Finny, giving us his stunned look of total appalled horrified amazement, “who would have thought that! Chinese. The Yellow Peril, right here at Devon.”

And as far as the history of the Class of 1943 at the Devon School is concerned, this was the only part of our conversation worth preserving. Brinker Hadley had been tagged with a nickname at last, after four years of creating them for others and eluding one himself. “Yellow Peril” Hadley swept through the school with the speed of a flu epidemic, and it must be said to his credit that Brinker took it well enough except when, in its inevitable abbreviation, people sometimes called him “Yellow” instead of “Peril.”

But in a week I had forgotten that, and I have never since forgotten the dazed look on Finny’s face when he thought that on the first day of his return to Devon I was going to desert him. I didn’t know why he had chosen me, why it was only to me that he could show the most humbling sides of his handicap. I didn’t care. For the war was no longer eroding the peaceful summertime stillness I had prized so much at Devon, and although the playing fields were crusted under a foot of congealed snow and the river was now a hard gray-white lane of ice between gaunt trees, peace had come back to Devon for me.

So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as it bore on us, overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable, and then at the last moment eluded by a word from Phineas; I had simply ducked, that was all, and the wave’s concentrated power had hurtled harmlessly overhead, no doubt throwing others roughly up on the beach, but leaving me peaceably treading water as before. I did not stop to think that one wave is inevitably followed by another even larger and more powerful, when the tide is coming in.

Name________________________________________________ Period_____English 9 Honors – Mrs. Zupo

CC- Part 3

Your Task: Closely read the text provided and write a well-developed, text-based response of two to three paragraphs. In your response, identify a central idea in the text and analyze how the author’s use of one writing strategy (literary element or literary technique or rhetorical device) develops this central idea. Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support your analysis. Do not simply summarize the text. You may use the margins to take notes as you read.

Guidelines:

Be sure to:

Identify a central idea in the text Analyze how the author’s use of one writing strategy (literary element or literary technique or rhetorical

device) develops this central idea. Examples include: characterization, conflict, denotation/connotation, metaphor, simile, irony, language use, point-of-view, setting, structure, symbolism, theme, tone, etc.

Use strong and thorough evidence from the text to support your analysis Organize your ideas in a cohesive and coherent manner Maintain a formal style of writing Follow the conventions of standard written English