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Phineas (“Finny”)
Brinker Hadley comes from a wealthy family and is obsessed with truth, order, and justice. Like Finny, Brinker is well-known on campus and widely considered a leader. But while Finny stands for the freewheeling innocence of youth, Brinker represents the reserved discipline of adulthood. For this reason, he romanticizes the idea of enlisting in the military to contribute to World War II, even convincing Gene to enlist with him one day several months after Finny’s accident. However, Finny returns that very day, and Gene decides to stay at Devon instead of joining the military. Losing steam, Brinker also decides to delay his enlistment, and this decision leads to a sense of disillusionment with the ordered, respectable life he has built. In turn, Brinker quits the many clubs and committees to which he belongs and adopts a cynical attitude about the war, reveling in the idea of breaking rules in his final year at Devon. At the same time, though, he never loses his passion for justice and discovering the truth, a fixation that leads him to suspect Gene of intentionally harming Finny. In the novel’s climactic scene, Brinker assembles a number of students to form a mock tribunal to hear Gene’s case, finally making it clear to Finny that Gene purposefully caused his fall. And though Brinker’s ability to intuit the truth about this situation makes him seem astute and mature, he makes light of the situation without recognizing the profound effect it has on Finny, who ends up falling down a set of stairs—and eventually dying due to complications from his injury—upon realizing the truth. In this regard, Brinker fails to account for the complex interpersonal dynamics surrounding Finny’s fall from the tree, proving that he isn’t quite as mature and shrewd as he’d like to think.
Brinker Hadley Quotes in A Separate Peace
The A Separate Peace quotes below are all either spoken by Brinker Hadley or refer to Brinker Hadley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
Across the hall […] where Leper Lepellier had dreamed his way through July and August amid sunshine and dust motes and windows through which the ivy had reached tentatively into the room, here Brinker Hadley had established his headquarters. Emissaries were already dropping in to confer with him.
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Chapter 7
Quotes
To enlist. To slam the door impulsively on the past, to shed everything down to my last bit of clothing, to break the pattern of my life […]. The war would be deadly all right. But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me.
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Chapter 8
Quotes
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.
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Chapter 12
Quotes
You’d get things so scrambled up nobody would know who to fight any more. You’d make a mess, a terrible mess, Finny, out of the war.
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Brinker Hadley Quotes in A Separate Peace
The A Separate Peace quotes below are all either spoken by Brinker Hadley or refer to Brinker Hadley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
Across the hall […] where Leper Lepellier had dreamed his way through July and August amid sunshine and dust motes and windows through which the ivy had reached tentatively into the room, here Brinker Hadley had established his headquarters. Emissaries were already dropping in to confer with him.
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Chapter 7
Quotes
To enlist. To slam the door impulsively on the past, to shed everything down to my last bit of clothing, to break the pattern of my life […]. The war would be deadly all right. But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me.
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Chapter 8
Quotes
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.
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Chapter 12
Quotes
You’d get things so scrambled up nobody would know who to fight any more. You’d make a mess, a terrible mess, Finny, out of the war.
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