Help! A Separate Peace , Question

These boys, like most adolescents, are trying to find their identities. They look to conform to many situations in order to be accepted. This is why they have "many faces" or have different personas depending on the circumstances.

"everyone at Devon had many public faces; in class we looked, if not exactly scholarly, at least respectably alert; on the playing fields we looked like innocent extroverts; and in the Butt Room we looked, very strongly, like criminals."