“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 136-137) John Knowles makes several references throughout the book to his title, A Separate Peace. Over the course of the story it is revealed that Gene, the narrator, fights his own inner demons, and wins; creating a separate, inner peace from the peace of the Devon school, and different too from the peace of his best friend Phineas. A Separate Peace is a title that foreshadows the events of the story arc and also has a deep military meaning that links the title to the war that took place in 1942-1945.
The phrase ‘separate peace’ is a military term used to describe a country’s’ relation with other countries. For example, if country A and
…show more content…
He yearns to be apart from Phineas — “Don't give me that line. Nobody at Devon has ever been surer of graduating than you are. You aren't working for that. You want to be head of the class, valedictorian...." (Knowles 51) — pushing himself to excel in the one area where Finny does poorly. Gene is the cause of Finny’s injury, and eventually; Finny’s death. But at the end of the novel, when Gene returns to Devon, he arrives at his real peace – apart from Phineas, apart from most everything. Though he says that Finny’s life and death taught him to live properly — "an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations" (Knowles 202) — he reaches this place only after Finny has be irrevocably removed from his life. Gene recognizes that the only enemy he has is within himself, achieving a total, separate peace from his adolescent years at Devon. In order to create a separate peace, Gene had to distance himself from everyone – Devon, his life, Finny’s death, even his consciousness in the last few moments before he achieves
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
In the story, Finny created a counterpart between his athleticism and Gene’s academic abilities. Since sports came easy to Finny, he assumed that Gene was naturally intelligent and smart. Finny eventually figured out that this was not true and that his assumptions were incorrect; “‘Oh for God sake! You don’t know what I’m talking about. No, of course not. Not you…’ ‘I didn’t know you needed to study,’ he said simply, ‘I didn’t think you ever did. I thought it just came to you.’ It seemed that he had made some kind of parallel between my studies and his sports. He probably thought anything you were good at came without effort” (Knowles 57-58). Finny was unable to comprehend that some skills do not come naturally to people. Devoted friendships are a result of having an appreciation for each other. Finny and Gene did not have this nor did they truly know each other very well. A lack of understanding between the two of them provoked various disputes throughout the novel. If Gene and Finny were truly friends, misunderstandings would not have occurred since they would have acknowledged their
At the Devon School, the climate of war creates an even greater impedance in the way of Gene and Phineas’ development, as now both characters must attempt to understand death. For Gene at such a young age, death has never been a part of his life until Phineas dies. Phineas has always been fated to die, but Gene is not able to comprehend this until Finny falls down the marble stairs at the First Academy Building. On revisiting the marble stairs, Gene recognizes their “exceptional hardness” (Knowles 11). The hardness that Gene speaks of is representative of the hardness of coping with war and death during such a crucial developmental time. This imagery is utilized by Knowles in A Separate Peace to define that until Gene recognizes the incomprehensible nature of war and death, he will never escape the liminal state. By watching Phineas fall down the marble stairs, Gene is enlightened to the fact that war is real, death cannot be avoided, and both can never be
At the beginning of the literary criticism, it discusses how the book, A Separate Peace, began growing in popularity through the 1900’s. The book was first published by Secker and Wanderburg in London, England (Alton). Its sales drastically went up after it won the William Faulkner Foundation Award (Alton). After that, many teachers wanted A Separate peace to replace the classic, Catcher and the Rye, due to the profanity found in the latter (Alton). After that, the various authors in the literary criticism discuss the praises and criticisms they have of the plot and characters in A Separate Peace. The first praise comes from David Holborn. He discusses how the flashback technique used at the beginning of the novel helps draw the reader
Of these two main reasons A Separate Peace has been challenged, the graphic language is perhaps the most interesting. In 1980 the book was challenged in Vernon-Verona-Sherill, NY School District on the basis that it contained “explicit sexual material” (ALA). In a literary analysis of the book states that, “the central theme of A Separate Peace is finding your true Identity and Self-Realization of one’s self.” This central theme can be taken as being finding out who you are because at the beginning of the novel when Gene wasn't sure of who he was, and basically just followed along with whatever crazy ideas Finny had come up with, such as being the first ones in
This story, A Separate Peace, exhibits interesting main characters which establish the frequent struggles of personal identity in adolescence. Gene's story is set in a boarding school called Devon during World War II and "The War" which he speaks of, gives overcast and grim feelings for his classes' future like an impending doom they cannot escape. Finny is a rebellious, charming, and very athletic boy. His charisma comes from his ability to make up rules and ideas on the spot and being able to get out of any trouble, which is magnetic to the other boys at Devon. Most of the teachers admired Phineas because he was the poster boy of boys not yet affected by the war, as mentioned by Gene when he says, "But there was another reason.
Phillips Exeter Academy, the school John Knowles attended, played a major role in the development of the story. John Knowles wrote A Separate Peace fifteen years after his graduation. In the beginning of A Separate Peace, Gene returns to visit the school fifteen years later (Knowles. “A Special Time, A Special School” 1). Knowles’ graduation time influenced the amount of years Gene visited the school after graduating. Like the Devon School, Exeter is located in New England, where most of the plot took place (1).
The book title, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, is relevant to the entire story. The story takes place during the peak of a new war, World War Two. Devon is a prep school in New Hampshire where many boys attend including the main characters, Gene and Finny. Throughout the book, the boys at Devon are not really affected by the war. They fantasize about the war because none of them have actually experienced it. But, as one of the students enlists for the war, the other characters perspectives dramatically change. Because Devon is isolated from the rest of the world, it creates a peaceful atmosphere for the students.
A Separate Peace is about two boys that go to a boarding school. Gene is a very intelligent and strange student. Meanwhile, Phineas is a very athletic and popular student. A Separate Peace is about many different wars, the war Gene fights in himself, the internal war that the boys fight at Devon school, and the war overseas.
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.
War can change a community, a state, a country and can change any of those places. The novel a separate peace by John Knowles is very different than most think. The title A Separate Peace holds a few similar, yet different meanings. The obvious one is when Devon is the initial accommodation of peace located in isolation from the remainder of the world. Gene and the other boys at Devon have achieved a peace outside of the war that is taking place around the world. Not only does the school represent a peace by itself, but the death of Phineas represents a peace for both Phineas and Gene; because Finny passed away, he achieved a peace with his own self pride. He felt useless and powerless due to his rejection from
Power, the perception of superiority over another human, is the source of many conflicts between people. Feeling inferior causes people to act beyond their normal personality. John Knowles strongly demonstrates this point in his work, A Separate Peace. In the relationship between Finny and Gene, Gene sets himself up to be inferior in the balance of power which motivates him to act irrationally to take power back from Finny.
In the early pages of the novel, Finny confesses that Gene is his best friend. This is considered a courageous act as the students at Devon rarely show any emotion. And rather than coming back with similar affection, Gene holds back and says nothing. Gene simply cannot handle the fact that Finny is so compassionate, so athletic, so ingenuitive, so perfect. As he put it, "Phineas could get away with anything." (p. 18) In order to protect himself from accepting Finny's compassion and risking emotional suffering, Gene creates a silent rivalry with Finny, and convinced himself that Finny is deliberately attempting to ruin his schoolwork. Gene decides he and Finny are jealous of each other, and reduces their friendship to cold trickery and hostility. Gene becomes disgusted with himself after weeks of the silent rivalry. He finally discovers the truth, that Finny only wants the best for Gene, and had no hidden evil intentions. This creates a conflict for Gene as he is not able to deal with Finny's purity and his own dark emotions. On this very day Finny wants to jump off of the tree branch into the Devon river at the same time as Gene, a "double jump" (p. 51), he says, as a way of bonding. It was this decision, caused by Finny's affection for Gene and outgoing ways that resulted in drastic change for the rest of his life.
Gene understands that Finny is unable to make a transition into adulthood when he says, “You’d get things so scrambled up nobody would know who to fight anymore. You’d make a mess, a terrible mess, Finny, out of the war” (191). Finny is unable to make an enemy out of anyone therefore preventing him from finding any real internal war to fight. Gene is already experiencing a mental and emotional battle from Finny’s fall allowing him to enter adulthood. Childhood can not thrive forever, adults cannot carry the careless characteristics of a small boy, and this is why Phineas can never made it to adulthood; he can never fully reveal an internal fight with true emotion behind it. Gene is shattered to the doctor say, “‘This is something I think boys of your generation are going to see a lot of,’ he said quietly, ‘and I will have to tell you about it now. Your friend is dead.’ He was incomprehensible” (193). Nevertheless, this marks the end of Gene’s war and grants him entrance into adulthood. Phineas’ death is the true mark that one can not be a child forever, they must find a fight inside their head that requires emotional and intellectual strength to become an
John Knowles' best-known work, A Separate Peace, remains one of the most popular post-war novels about adolescence. Although set in World War II, the novel explores a crucial cultural theme of the '50s, the motivations of a young man making a troubled transition from childhood to adulthood. Like the novels Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye, as well as the film Rebel Without a Cause, A Separate Peace dramatizes the challenge of growing up to be a truly individual adult in a conformist world.