Psychology is the study of behavior and mind, embracing all aspects of human experience. It is an academic discipline and applied science which seeks to understand individuals by establishing general principles and researching specific cases. In the book Perfect Peace, Emma Jean Peace raises her seventh son to be her daughter after having seven straight consecutive boys. Emma Jean’s case is one that needs to be researched and studied because it can be agreeable that under her current psychological well-being her decision is justifiable. It is very possible to understand why she did what she did. Emma Jean is not the one to blame in this matter.
Emma Jean’s upbringing plays a significant role in why her decision can be understandable.
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Without being healed, Emma Jean was never able to let go of the pain that her mother inflicted upon her. Emma Jean proved that she had never been healed and was still letting the pain that Mae Helen caused control her life the day Gracie first appeared at their house hoping to get her sister to visit their mother. Their mother was sick and supposedly had admitted that Emma Jean had everything that she (Mae Helen) ever wanted. Gracie claimed that their mother had changed and was sorry for how she had treated Emma Jean, but Emma Jean showed no sympathy still and swore to never visit her. This continued to affect her and her relationships. This also affected her psychologically which led to her trying to overcome the pain by creating this relationship with Perfect to give and also get what she didn’t from Mae Helen. This seemed to be right at the time of her doing but it still never healed the pain that Emma Jean truly held. This proved to be true when Mae Helen died and Emma Jean accompanied her grave still questioning her actions of how she treated her growing …show more content…
Emma Jean cannot be blamed without ever having healed from the childhood abuse Mae Helen put her through. Psychology directly relates to Emma Jean’s case. She experienced a terrible childhood which reflected her decisions she made as an adult. It reflected the type of adult she became. The book Perfect Peace is a good representation of showing the prison of gender roles that we continuously agree to box ourselves into. Perfect and Mister represent the small portion that is acceptable to living outside of this prison. I think that without Emma Jean’s decision to raise Perfect as a girl, then Perfect and Mister would have been forever trapped inside the prison just like others. Not only is Emma Jean’s decision justifiable and agreeable, but it also had benefits too. “If parents’ hold gender-differentiated perceptions of, and expectations for, their children’s competencies in various areas, then, through self-fulfilling prophecies, parents could play a critical role in socializing gender differences in children’s self-perceptions, interests, and skill acquisition” (Gender Role Stereotypes, Expectancy Effects, and Parents’ Socialization of Gender Differences 184). Emma Jean’s decision led to the enlightenment of Perfect and Mister reconstructing and challenging the ideas and scripts of gender
A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles is a flashback of the main character, Gene Forrester’s schooling at the Devon School in New England. During this flashback Gene remembers his best friend Finny, who was really athletic and outgoing. Gene and Finny’s friendship was a relationship of jealousy. Gene was jealous of Finny’s talent in athletics, and Finny was envious of Gene’s talent in school. In the end, Gene’s jealousy of Finny takes over and causes him to shake the tree branch that makes Finny fall and break his leg. The break was bad, but it was not until Finny fell down the stairs and broke his leg again, that he had to have surgery. The surgery that Finny would undergo would cause more complications and heartbreaking news for Gene. During the surgery Finny would lose his life due to some bone marrow that escaped into his blood stream and stopped his heart from beating. “As I was moving the bone some of the marrow must have escaped into his blood stream and gone directly to his heart and stopped it” (Knowles 193). Although people do not normally think about bone marrow as being a huge part of the human body, it can cause some major issues if it has to be replaced or escapes into the blood stream.
Gene the main character returns to his boarding school, Devon, fifteen years after he graduated. First he visits a flight of marble stairs, then he visits a tree by the river which brings back memories of his time at the school. Gene continues to tell of this time, tells that he was 16 living with his good friend Phineas. It is in the early 1940’s so World War II is a big topic in the story.
The literary analysis essay for A Separate Peace entitled Chapter 7: After the Fall notes that Gene’s brawl with Cliff Quackenbush occurs for two reasons: the first reason being that Gene was fighting to defend Finny, and the second reason being that Quackenbush is the antithesis of Finny. Cliff Quackenbush calls Gene a “maimed son-of-a-bitch”, since Gene holds a position on the team that is usually reserved for physically disabled students, and Gene reacts by hitting him in the face (Knowles, 79). At first, Gene remarks that he didn’t know why he reacted this way, then he says, “it was almost as though I were maimed. Then the realization that there was someone who was flashed over me”, referring to Finny (Knowles, 79). Quackenbush is “the adult world of punitive authority personified”, his voice mature, his convictions militaristic (Chapter, 76). Quackenbush reminds Gene of the adult world and all of the things that Finny and Devon protected him from, such as war.
“The more sure I am that I 'm right, the more likely I will actually be mistaken. My need to be right makes it more likely that I will be wrong! Likewise, the more sure I am that I am mistreated, the more likely I am to miss ways that I am mistreating others myself. My need for justification obscures the truth." This sentence is one of many quotes from the book I really liked and agreed with. After reading The Anatomy of Peace, I realized that the Arbinger Institute was deeply insightful helping me to understand the reality and myself. I also realized that the moment I start to agree with this statement, I walked out of my box.
The misfortunes Jane was given early in life didn’t alter her passionate thinking. As a child she ...
In the novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the protagonist, Gene Forrester “battled” within himself to find “a separate peace” and in this process directed his emotions at Phineas, his roommate. Forrester and Phineas formed the illusion of a great companionship, but there was a “silent rivalry” between them in Forrester’s mind. Self deceptions in Forrester led him to believe that Phineas was “out to get him” (Forrester). Subconsciously Forrester jounced the limb of the tree and forced Phineas to fall and break his leg. Phineas found out the truth of his “accident” with the help of Leper Lepellier and Brinker Hadley, who were friends that attended Devon High School. Gene Forrester’s conflict between his resentment of and loyalty toward Phineas’ personality and athletic abilities was resolved by the death of Phineas.
Michael Morpurgo once said “Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart.” In A Separate Peace by John Knowles; there are a wide variety of themes such as: coming of age, jealousy and identity. This novel is about two main characters one being Gene who is still living and another being Finny who passed away in his earlier years of life. Gene returns to his old prep school Devon where both he and Finny once attended. A Separate Peace brings back old memories from the summer of 1942 to the summer of 1943. During this duration of time World War II is taking place. Gene goes back in his adult years for two reasons; to visit the “fearful sights,” the marble staircase and the tree by the river. The three major symbols throughout this novel are coming of age, jealousy and identity.
Through this prospect, she has internalized the standards in fulfilling the norms. If she does not fulfill it, she creates a sense of futility, an accurate, unvarnished replication of the guilt feelings that she suffers. Emma lives out its real, logical, and bitter conclusion of the emptiness in the traditions of marriage and the masculine customs that go with it. By marriage, a woman, specifically Emma, losses their liberty in all its physical, social, moral and even spiritual consequences. She envies the advantages of a man saying, “...at least is free; he can explore each
Because Emma Jean is willing to do anything for Mae Hellen’s approval she rejects a personal invitation from her biological father Claude Lovejoy, to go with him and get to know him and his family. Love-Joy, the last name she inherits from her father, is also the very same thing she would’ve got had she accepted his invitation. Instead she has her mother’s last name “Hurt", which logically explains why Emma Jean ultimately decides to dictate her child’s gender herself, regardless of his sex. How can readers not understand Emma Jean, when the intent of her idea never stemmed from a malicious place but to simply seek fulfillment and give the life she always wanted, to someone else? The blame can not also be indicative to Emma Jean alone. Had Gus been a holistically involved parent, he would have KNOWN that his “Perfect” was a son too, and maybe had the church been fulfilling their assignment, Emma Jean’s healing and deliverance would’ve come a little sooner. By not being healed from her own childhood abuse, Emma Jean’s internal and unresolved hurt prove that she cannot be held responsible for her current psychological well
During the 1940’s in America, times were hard. It was a time of war. In this period of history, people found themselves looking for peace and innocence. John Knowles’s A Separate Peace illustrates a boarding school, one of the only places left to find peace, where the main characters, Gene and Phineas, face their own internal wars with each other. Starting out their friendship seems strong and everlasting but as the novel progresses, like all friendships, the fire between them seems to dwindle. Although they share the goal of excelling, Phineas and Gene clearly differ in athletics, academics, and personality.
John Knowles writes a compelling realistic fiction about the lives of two teenage boys throughout the start of World War II in his novel A Separate Peace. Peter Yates the director of the movie plays the story out in a well organized theatrical manner. There are similarities and differences in these two works of art. However; there are also similarities.
Brenda Shoshanna once stated, “All conflict we experience in the world, is a conflict within our own selves.” This quote recognizes how much conflict influences our everyday lives and personality. The wise words were especially true for Gene, the main character in A separate peace, who let his battles with other characters and the society of his time become his own internal battles. In John Knowles’s novel, A separate peace, all the types of conflict are shown through the main character Gene.
Another form of Emma’s neglect is one of manipulation, mostly through her control over Harriet Smith. Emma is “willful, manipulative, an arranger or rather a misarranger of other people’s lives. Much of the time she fails to see things clearly and truly, and her self-knowledge is uncertain” (Goodheart)25. “One significant effect of harping on Emma's snobbery is to set in relief her romantic notions of Harriet's origin and destiny” (Brooke)26. Although to Harriet, Emma’s “help” to her is one that will reveal optimistic results and a proper husband, Harriet is incapable to taking up for herself against Emma, but if “[s]he would form her opinions...
I loved all of her little quirks and weird habits. Like how she used to always tell people if they smelt good after she hugged them, or how she would joke about her life ending if she couldn’t find something, or how when she was nervous or shy she would pull her sleeves down so they went over the tips of her fingers. I loved them all. But one day in maybe March, or April, in ninety degree weather, she came to school in an oversized sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers; she couldn’t have covered more of her skin if she tried. Emma had big dark rings under her eyes, she didn’t make eye contact with anyone when she walked in and went straight to her locker. Something had changed. Something had hurt her, badly. She went from the always cheery easily excitable big eyed weirdo she was, to this tired strung out almost scared girl. I remember walking up to her and making eye contact, she looked ready to burst into tears. I asked if everything was okay and she replied as honest as I have ever seen her with a simple “No,” and walked away, hugging her books to her
The democratic peace theory was not always seen as the substantial argument and significant contribution to the field of International Relations that it is today. Prior to the 1970’s, it was the realist and non-realist thought that took preeminence in political theoretical thinking. Though the democratic peace theory was first criticized for being inaccurate in its claim that democracy promotes peace and as such democracies do not conflict with each other, trends, statistical data, reports have suggested and proved that the democratic peace theory is in fact valid in its claim. Over the years having been refined, developed and amended, it is now most significant in explaining modern politics and it is easy to accept that there is indeed a lot of truth in the stance that democracy encourages peace. The democratic peace theory is a concept that largely influenced by the likes of Immanuel Kant, Wilson Woodrow and Thomas Paine.