SECTION B: PROSE JOHN KNOWLES: A Separate Peace Remember to support your ideas with details from the writing. Read this extract, and then answer the question that follows it: 'They were going to give me,' he was almost laughing, everywhere but in his eyes which continued to oppose all he said, 'they were going to give me a discharge, a Section Eight discharge.' As a last defense I had always taken refuge in a scornful superiority, based on nothing. I sank back in the chair, eyebrows up, shoulders shrugging. 'I don't even know what you're talking about. You just don't make any sense at all. It's all Japanese to me.' 'A Section Eight discharge is for the nuts in the service, the psychos, the Funny Farm candidates. Now do you know what I'm talking about? They give you a Section Eight discharge, like a dishonorable discharge only worse. You can't get a job after that. Everybody wants to see your discharge, and when they see a Section Eight they look at you kind of funny–the kind of expression you've got on your face, like you were looking at someone with their nose blown off but don't want them to know you're disgusted–they look at you that way and then they say, 'Well, there doesn't seem to be an opening here at present.' You're screwed for life, that's what a Section Eight discharge means.' 'You don't have to yell at me, there's nothing wrong with my hearing.' 'Then that's tough shit for you, Buster. Then they've got you.' 'Nobody's got me.' 'Oh they've got you all right.' 'Don't tell me who's got me and who hasn't got me. Who do you think you're talking to? Stick to your snails, Lepellier.' He began to laugh again. 'You always were a lord of the manor, weren't you? A swell guy, except when the chips were down. You always were a savage underneath. I always knew that only I never admitted it. But in the last few weeks,' despair broke into his face again, 'I admitted a hell of a lot to myself. Not about you. Don't flatter yourself. I wasn't thinking about you. Why the hell should I think about you? Did you ever think about me? I thought about myself, and Ma, and the old man, and pleasing them all the time. Well, never mind about that now. It's you we happen to be talking about now. Like a savage underneath. Like,' now there was the blind confusion in his eyes again, a wild slyness around his mouth, 'like that time you knocked Finny out of the tree.' I sprang out of the chair. 'You stupid crazy bastard—' Still laughing, ‘Like that time you crippled him for life.' I shoved my foot against the rung of his chair and kicked. Leper went over in his chair and collapsed against the floor. Laughing and crying he lay with his head on the floor and his knees up, '... always were a savage underneath.' Quick heels coming down the stairs, and his mother, large, soft, and gentle-looking, quivered at the entrance. ‘What on earth happened? Elwin!' 'I'm terribly—it was a mistake,' I listened objectively to my own voice, 'he said something crazy. I forgot myself—I forgot that he's, there's something the matter with his nerves, isn't there? He didn't know what he was saying.' 'Well, good heaven, the boy is ill.' We both moved swiftly to help up the chuckling Leper. 'Did you come here to abuse him?' 'I'm terribly sorry,' I muttered. 'I'd better get going.' Mrs Lepellier was helping Leper toward the stairs. 'Don't go,' he said between chuckles, 'stay for lunch. You can count on it. Always three meals a day, war or peace, in this room.' And I did stay. Sometimes you are too ashamed to leave. That was true now. [from Chapter 10] How does Knowles make this such a disturbing moment in the novel?