Quote 37
Everything at Devon slowly changed and slowly harmonized with what had gone before. So it was logical to hope that since the buildings and the Deans and the curriculum could achieve this, I could achieve, perhaps unknowingly already had achieved, this growth and harmony myself (1.13).
This becomes the governing question for all of A Separate Peace – whether or not Gene has achieved growth and harmony. As readers we are meant to reconsider this question again in the reflections of Chapter Thirteen.
Quote 38
Unbelievable that there were other trees which looked like it here. It had loomed in my memory as a huge lone spike dominating the riverbank, forbidding as an artillery piece, high as the beanstalk. Yet here was a scattered grove of trees, none of them of any particular grandeur (1.17).
This sets the stage for narrative unreliability. We have to doubt the accuracy of Gene's story, not because he's actively lying, but because memory is flawed and subjective.
Quote 39
Changed, I headed back through the mud. I was drenched; anybody could see it was time to come in out of the rain (1.20).
Check that out – Gene is "changed" simply by having visited the tree, by having returned to Devon at all, maybe even by his telling of his story. The question, then, is…HOW is Gene changed?