A Separate Peace Vocabulary
Freshman Literature & Composition
Week 1: Ch. 1-3
Due: Friday, October 9th
1. “Standing on this limb, you could by a prodigious effort jump far enough out into the
river for safety” (15). ADJECTIVE
2. The toll sailed over the expansive tops of all the elms, the great slanting roofs and
formidable chimneys of the dormitories, the narrow and brittle old housetops, across the
open New Hampshire sky to us coming back from the river” (18). ADJECTIVE
3. “ ‘Well, in case suitors begin clamoring at the door, you can tell them I’m wearing this as
an emblem.’ He turned around to let me admire it” (25). NOUN
4. “That night Finny began to talk abstractedly about it, as though it were a venerable,
entrenched institution of the Devon School” (33). ADJECTIVE
5. “Every time, when I got myself into position to jump, I felt a flash of disbelief that I was
doing anything so perilous” (34). ADJECTIVE
Week 2: Ch. 4-7
Due: Friday October, 16th
1. “At the end of September I started back toward Devon on the jammed, erratic trains of
September, 1942. I reached Boston seventeen hours behind schedule…” (67). ADJECTIVE
2.” In an apse of the church sat their wives and children, the objects during the tedious
winter months of our ceaseless, ritual speculation” (73). ADJECTIVE
3. “ ‘Damn right you are!’ He put indignant conviction into this, pouncing on the first sprig
of assertiveness in me” (78).
4. “It was a mistake; the radio had suddenly gone quiet, and my voice ringing in the
abrupt, releasing hush galvanized them all” (89). VERB (galvanize)
(OVER FOR #5)
5. They were not much older than we were and although probably just recruits, they gave
the impression of being an elite as they were carried past our drab ranks” (97). NOUN
Week 3: Ch. 8-13
1. “ ‘Not at all,’ he replied ambiguously, reaching for a pair of crutches which leaned
against the desk” (104). ADJECTIVE (ambiguous)
2. “It was preeminently the smell of the human body after it had been used to the limit,
such a smell as has a meaning and poignance for any athlete, just as it has any lover”
(113). ADJECTIVE (preeminent)
3. “The hard cider began to take care of us. Or I wonder now whether it wasn’t cider but
our own exuberance which intoxicated us, sent restraining flying, causing Brinker to
throw the football block on the statue of the Headmaster…” (135-136). NOUN
4. “ ‘Bedrooms too.’ It was a try toward relieving the foreboding in his manner; it only
worked to deepen it” (141). NOUN
5. “ ‘What are you talking about!” Finny’s voice was full of contemptuous music. ‘What
rumors and suspiciouns?’” (168). ADJECTIVE