1. The Summer and Winter Sessions. The summer session is where the boys have fun and enjoy themselves, breaking the rules, and doing other childly things. Summer usually has to do with warmth, and innocence. The winter session is the session after Finny is gone due to his leg, and is when the law that they once broke hit them hard. Winter is usually affiliated with loneliness and darkness, but it is where the conflicts between students arise.

2. The tree:

The tree at the first resembled the friendship between Finny and Gene. It was something that brought them together as friends. But later, the tree comes to be the setting of an act of violence, and the tree no longer serves as the bonding point between those two.

3. The Devon and Naguamsett rivers

The Devon river serves as the hangout during the summer sessions between the boys and their social club. It’s clean and serene, and a peaceful location where boys where to be boys. The Naguamsett river was quite the opposite, dirty and murky, not a place to play in. It was also during the session after Finny was gone, and it was the location of Quackenbush’s and Gene’s fight.

4. The snowball fight

Whereas the snowball fight might have been all fun and games for the boys, deep inside, they were playing war. Maybe the boys don’t know their own strength or not, they might just have let it rip and actually hit each other hard. It’s not always fun and games in a school like that where the conflicts with other boys are at an all time high.

5. Peace/Violence in the Story

In this case, the violence came first. Obviously, Gene hurt Finny….bad. But that ball didn’t stop rolling, through that act of violence, Gene tried to learn. Gene tried to learn from his mistakes and attempted to try to keep Finny’s memory on by keeping his spirit alive in him. So through that, he finally achieves peace after Finny’s death, as he finally understood what Finny was there for.