A Separate Peace: Nature of Man
The greatest battles of humanity are often not merely a clash of arms, but a quiet, vast conflict in the human heart. Similarly, actions in the world are thoughts made into reality, and feelings turned into motion. It is terrible to realize that war in all its evils is often a pure expression of something sinister within. A Separate Peace by John Knowles intimately explores the depths within humanity to uncover the essence of human nature. The novel is focuses on the solitary and intelligent narrator Gene Forester and his best friend, the athletic Phineas, or Finny. Their experiences over the course of a semester have many parallels with author John Knowles' actual life. He based the Devon School setting on his own time at the prestigious Philips Exeter Academy during the end of World War II (Jones). The author uses introspection to exhume the mind and soul of Gene, and to explore what shapes him. In his novel A Separate Peace, John Knowles expresses that one can only mature through self-awareness, in order to counter the indoctrination of youth into World War II.
Fittingly, the single greatest expression of such knowledge is in the characterization of the protagonist Gene, and later his development. He is the premier student of Devon Academy, intelligent and studious, but a social outcast, trying to stay afloat in a school of piranhas for classmates. He is commonly described as the "cautious Protestant" with a "germ of wildness" ("A Separate Peace"), describing his innate savagery beneath the veneer of civilization. In the beginning of the story, he held great enmity for Phineas despite their friendship. Gene saw Finny first as a competing rival, neurotic and jealous like himsel...
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Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. 1975 ed. 1960. New York City: Bantam Books, 1975. Print.
“A Separate Peace.” Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 98. Detroit, 2005. Gale Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Nov. 2011.
Umphlett, Wiley Lee. “The Death of Innocence: The Paradox of the Dying Athlete.” The Sporting Myth and The American Experience: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 1975. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1975. 130-45. Rpt. in Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 98. Detroit: n.p., 2005. N. pag. Gale Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Nov. 2011.
Witherington, Paul. “A Separate Peace: A Study in Structural Ambiguity.” English Journal 54.9 (1965): 795-800. Rpt. in Children’s Literature Review. Ed. Tom Burns. Vol. 98. Detroit: n.p., 2005. N. pag. Gale Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Nov. 2011.
In the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the narrator, Gene Forrester struggles to earn and preserve a separate peace. The story takes place in a remote boarding school named Devon, in New Hampshire. While Gene and Finny are in school, World War II is taking place. The author clearly explains an important story about the jealousy between Gene and his best friend, Phineas. Gene suspects that Finny is trying to sabotage his grades, and Gene allows his jealousy to control his actions. Therefore, Gene misinterprets their relationship by thinking that they shared enmity towards each other, and this caused Gene to enter a world of jealousy and hatred, which ultimately leads to Finny’s death. By examining this jealousy, John Knowles
A Separate Peace is a coming of age novel in which Gene, the main character, revisits his high school and his traumatic teen years. When Gene was a teen-ager his best friend and roommate Phineas (Finny) was the star athlete of the school.
The theme “rite of passage” was used in the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. This moving from innocence to adulthood was contained within three sets of interconnected symbols: summer and winter, the Devon and Naguamsett Rivers, and peace and war. These symbols served as a backdrop upon which the novel was developed. The loss if Gene Forrester’s innocence was examined through these motifs.
In John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, characters Gene and Phineas begin their journeys to adulthood in a war-torn environment. The dynamic formed between a world full of struggle and the crucial age of development in high school proves to be an excellent setting to examine the abilities of both Gene and Phineas to “come of age.” Being a Bildungsroman, the theme of coping with war and death is highlighted via the imagery that surrounds both Gene’s epiphany moment at the marble stairs, and its introduction at the beginning of the novel. Additionally, Knowles employs a flashback to set a nostalgic and somewhat reflective mood, which further extends this meaning. In Knowles’ “coming of age” novel A Separate Peace, the use of imagery surrounding the marble stairs, and a reminiscent flashback aid Gene discovers that war and death can never be understood.
It brings up several valid points and presents new ways of thinking that the reader may not recognize until digging deeper into A Separate Piece. Chapter 7: After the Fall gives the reader a more knowledgeable perspective on the novel and its characters, especially Gene and Finny and the relationship that the two have. Without viewing this literary analysis, a student wishing to write a paper on A Separate Peace would have great difficulty suggesting and supporting ideas involving Gene and Finny’s
6th ed. New York: St. James Press, 1996. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Jan. 2014.
McQuade, Donald, ed. The Harper American Literature. Harper & Row Publishers: New York, 1987, pp. 1308-1311. This paper is the property of NetEssays.Net Copyright © 1999-2002
In John Knowles novel A Separate Peace the quote "Everything has to evolve or else it perishes" (125), serves as a realization that instead of dwelling in the past, everything needs to move forward or else it will be left behind to be forgotten. This quote refers to the boys. Throughout the book they have to be able to deal with all that is thrown at them including all of the changes that are occurring during the war. Each boy has evolved in some way. Gene is finally learning to except his emotions, Finny is admitting the bad, and Leper the person you would least expect to be in the war joined the war.
Throughout A Separate Peace, John Knowles uses semiotic codes to express an adolescent’s transition into adulthood in a time of conflict and war. Barthes writes, “Ideological imperatives express themselves through a multiplicity of codes which ‘invade’ the text in the form of key signifiers. Each of these signifiers represents a digression outside of the text to an established body of knowledge which it connotes; each one functions as an abbreviated version of the entire system (code) of which it is a part,” (Semiotics, 31). These semiotic codes are often looked at as social enigmas that relate to the rules and ideologies developed by the culture of the time period, in this case at Devon Prep School in New Hampshire in 1942-43 during World War II. Codes are where semiotics, cultural values, and social structures mesh. The ideals and challenges of war parallel the friendship between the two main characters, Gene and Finny, and particularly relate to Gene’s obsession with competition and envy of his best friend and enemy. These codes impose ideological imperatives that translate from Gene and Finny’s friendship to the larger picture; they connote the loss of innocence and transformation into adulthood, and ultimately define the dominant values of the time period’s culture, as well as the overall meaning of Knowles’ text. Through the use
"A Separate Peace." Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Vol. 3. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp., 1993.
Dr. Wayne Dyer once said, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” This saying is also true for the personality of Brinker Hadley, a character in A Separate Peace. In this novel, Brinker and his group of friends spend their time at Devon School making memories with exciting, yet dangerous adventures. With the idea of World War II in the back of their minds, the boys are trying to focus on the joys in life. However, a situation caused by Brinker’s questioning brings great sorrow. Brinker Hadley represents a headstrong, lawful, and perhaps misconceived character in this novel,
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.
YORK, LORRAINE. "Wars, The (1977)." Oxford Companion To Canadian Literature (1997): 1168. Literary Reference Center. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
Gene is a well-educated, athletic individual. He takes his school work seriously and keeps to himself, meaning he doesn’t favor standing out or being in the spotlight. He is a follower, especially when it comes to his best friend, Phineas. Throughout the book, he often compares himself to Phineas and talks about how perfect Finny is.
McLaughlin, Greg, and Stephen Baker. The Propaganda of Peace. Bristol, UK: Intellect Ltd., 2010. Print.