In life, historical events often play an important role in a persons life. Many times people can drastically have a change of opinion over night. In A Separate Peace, the whole atmosphere at the Devon School changed as World War II progressed. The boys either eagerly awaited draft, preferred to enlist in the area of war they wanted, or did not want to go at all. The students at the school were forced to create activities for enjoyment since old ones could not be played because of lack of materials. When a friend returns from the war, the boys at Devon got a real sense of what the war was like. The boys learned that going to war was not all fun and games like they had anticipated. The influence World War II had on the characters in A Separate Peace and life at the Devon School, was clearly depicted through their actions and activities. The beginning of the novel allows the reader to get a feel of what the Devon School was like during that time period. Students of war age were constantly leaving Devon to go to the war, either by choice or by draft. Whether kids wanted to go or not, the anticipation was always present. As winter approached the Devon school, so was the encroaching shadow of the war. The boys were called out to help shovel free a troop train trapped by snow-blocked tracks. The experience "brings the war home" for all of them, and they realized they would have to face a crucial decision very soon. Maturity leaps upon them, whether they're ready for it or not, at the tender age of seventeen. The excitement of the war had gotten to everybody at the school, including the staff, and made it a chaotic place. The boys were able to get away with disobeying the rules. Many students cut class, and left school grounds often and were not penalized. When Leper returned from the war the boys realized that participating in the war wasnt all fun and games, and that a lot of bad things happened. When Leper told Gene how he had been discharged on charges of insanity, Gene blew up at Leper. Gene had thought the war was a good place, and the notion of a Section Eight Discharge was not what he wanted to hear. It completely ruined Genes thoughts and his hopes. Gene was completely set on enlisting in the army, to experience what so many others were experiencing, until Leper informed him of the wars negative aspects. Leper, more disappointed than anyone, did not share his reason for returning home with everyone. He was ashamed, and did not want to share the horrors of war with everyone. Scarcity of popular materials made it difficult for the boys at Devon to continue with some normal activities. Finny, the athletic boy he was, made up Blitzball, a game named after the famous Blitzkrieg (a German war tactic). The game of course was successful in keeping the boys busy. Along with athletic creations, the boys started a club called The Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session, a club which about six boys signed up for. The club met almost every night, and had special initiations for the members. The club was designed to give the boys something to do because they were unable to participate in the regular things they did. The boys at Devon were not having the same kind of school year that they had had in the past. Partly because of an interuption in their daily lives. World War II had a strong influence on life in the novel A Separate Peace. The author displays the influence through the characters actions and activities. The students at the Devon School were overwhelmed with the idea of war, and were eagerly awaiting their departure to an area of it. However, when a good friend returned from the war with a different idea of how it was, the boys rethought their eagerness. The boys were forced to make up games and such to participate in to keep them occupied when they werent studying. This novel showed that like with other major historical events, war can completely alter a way of life, changing everything from personalities to activities.
Welcome to a small school called Devon during the summer of 1942. At the beginning of the second World War, Devon is a quiet place with close friends and great memories, until one event brings the entire school into itÕs own war. With the star athlete having his leg ÒaccidentallyÓ broken by his best friend, Devon turns against itself into a war zone where nobody is safe.
The novel A Separate Peace focuses mainly around a 17 year old named Gene Forrester and his psychological development. The story is set in a boys boarding school in USA during World War II. There are four main boys in the novel and they all undergo major character changes through the story. One of them goes crazy, and the others experience severe attitude changes. Gene is caught right in the center of these changes. He is very close with all of the other three boys, and thus all of the changes affect him very much. Due to all the tension occurring in this novel because of the war and events going on at the school, there is a lot of denial of truth happening. Three of the four boys mentioned earlier deny the truth at sometime in the story. This denying of truth sometimes ends with the person who committed the fault in a bad condition at the end of the book, and sometimes in good condition. So it can be said that there were both positive and negative results for each of the denials of the truth, but these will be explained more in-depth in the following paragraphs.
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
World War II influenced the boys in the novel A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, by making them grow and mature more quickly than they would have had there not been a war. The war makes some boys stronger and more ready for whatever life would bring, while in others it disables them to the point that they cannot handle the demands of life.
“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed” -Friedrich Nietzsche. A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a coming of age and tragedy novel. In this book, John Knowles shows us the lives of teenage boys during World War II. They boys may seem alright with their cheerful attitudes, but the raging war is still on their minds. They are wondering what it would be like to become a war hero, how everyone would respect them or if the war isn’t as great as it seems. The glory of World War II enticed Finny, Leper, and Brinker only to later reveal to them its true colors.
War is inescapable. During hard times, bad things often have a way of embedding themselves in the good. A Separate Peace is the story of disobedient schoolboys during the second World War, and the writing focuses on how they are directly and indirectly affected by it. In A Separate Peace, John Knowles portrays how the boys achieve a separate peace during the Winter Carnival, yet their actions and symbols are tinged with war-like imagery.
War slowly begins to strip away the ideals these boy-men once cherished. Their respect for authority is torn away by their disillusionment with their schoolteacher, Kantorek who pushed them to join. This is followed by their brief encounter with Corporal Himmelstoss at boot camp. The contemptible tactics that their superior officer Himmelstoss perpetrates in the name of discipline finally shatters their respect for authority. As the boys, fresh from boot camp, march toward the front for the first time, each one looks over his shoulder at the departing transport truck. They realize that they have now cast aside their lives as schoolboys and they feel the numbing reality of their uncertain futures.
For Finny and Gene, the summer session at Devon was a time of blissful happiness and a time where they allowed themselves to become utterly overtaken by their own illusions. The summer session was the complete embodiment of peace and freedom, and Gene saw Devon as a haven of peace. To them, the war was light years away and was almost like a dream than an actual event. At Devon, it was hard for them to imagine that war could even exist. Finny and Gene forged the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session and acted out in the most wild and boisterous ways. Missing dinner or being absent from school for days to go to the beach did not even earn them a reprimand. “I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen....We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to prese...
In John Knowle’s A Separate Peace, symbols are used to develop and advance the themes of the novel. One theme is the lack of an awareness of the real world among the students who attend the Devon Academy. The war is a symbol of the "real world", from which the boys exclude themselves. It is as if the boys are in their own little world or bubble secluded from the outside world and everyone else. Along with their friends, Gene and Finny play games and joke about the war instead of taking it seriously and preparing for it. Finny organizes the Winter Carnival, invents the game of Blitz Ball, and encourages his friends to have a snowball fight. When Gene looks back on that day of the Winter Carnival, he says, "---it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, special and separate peace" (Knowles, 832). As he watches the snowball fight, Gene thinks to himself, "There they all were now, the cream of the school, the lights and leaders of the senior class, with their high IQs and expensive shoes, as Brinker had said, pasting each other with snowballs"(843).
...tary through it. By using a real world event such as World War Two and using fictional characters Knowles can provide a different insight on the events and show how it effects the characters actions and the progression of the novel. During WWII the only topic on campus was the war. About either who has recently joined or what has happened to those who have joined. Finny and Gene chose not to speak of the war to each other, just to concentrate on the Olympics and what the best way to train. Today’s teens do not feel at all obligated to participate in the war, with so much more going on they try to put it in the back of their minds. But, teens during WWII felt tremendous pressure from their peers and adults to take part, as the whole country was doing everything that they could to help out the cause. Today the only person pressuring teens are the teen themselves.
The book touches on the issues of the repercussions of war on a small town by the voice, Henry and how he unfolds the story of a World War 1 soldier who lived in the town of Strattford before his death and the sights and thoughts this soldier saw and had such as “Troops and guns everywhere. Wreckage by the roads.”(128) and “I will work at forgetting those places until the day I die”(199). This is relatable to teens today as the Australian ANZAC history is taught in every Australian school and many Australian teens may have family history connected to the ANZAC’s meaning they would be able to see their ancestry reflected in this book making it easy to sympathise with for these teenagers. The voice expresses the social and ethical issues of the effects of war and is able to easily sympathise with young people
Setting expatiates the theme of loss of innocence. For example, the four major characters in this story are sixteen and seventeen years old, which is the age when teenagers prepare to end their childhood and become adults. Also, the Devon school, where the story takes place, is a place where boys make the transition to full adulthood, and so this setting shows more clearly the boys' own growth. Finally, World War II, which in 1942 is raging in Europe, forces these teenage boys to grow up fast; during their seventeenth year they must evaluate everything that the war means to them and decide whether to take an active ...
When the present generation is asked about World War II, minds wander toward Hitler, the Nazis, and possibly one of the many movies “based” on true events. This generation is completely unattached to the naive soldiers who fought against the notorious Hitler and Nazis. The horrors that young persons experienced during this time are completely unimaginable, except when told through a realistic story highlighting the emotional trauma young boys endured during that time through the novel A Separate Peace. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, highlights the multiple meanings of “separate peace” as both a title and theme. These areas are symbolized by the setting, characters, and plot elements within the story, showing the true trauma of growing up in a war-torn
Maturity is crucial in leading a successful and meaningful life. Being mature allows people to make reasonable decisions and life choices. This is true for the boys John Knowles has created in his novel A Separate Peace. In this book, two teenage boys named Gene and Phineas attend Devon, a private school, during the struggle of World War I. Throughout the novel John teaches the audience that growing up in a time of hardship and conflict creates maturity. Knowles implies that greatness in others can cause an individual to think and do things that normally would not be considered, and he creates this idea by using the literary elements of irony, conflict, and tone.
A Separate Peace shares the lives of students at Devon that are forced into an unknown world of fear, problems, and uncertainty as they head off to World War II in training to fight and represent their country where they will find or lose themselves and make important decisions that will impact their future. The students at Devon are put into adulthood at an early age, having to fight and make their country proud, but they are left feeling pressure for a war they do not start. The students enter a world of unexpectedness and dread where they are forced into adulthood through war, and are exposed to self sacrifice, physical awareness, and patriotism.