A Separate Peace: by John Knowles
During World War II in the struggle for peace among nations comes a smaller, but still significant struggle, in a prep school boy becoming a man and waking up to reality.
In the book A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles, creates the image of two sixteen-year old boys struggling to keep what little sense of peace they know, even though there is a war going on all around them. Gene Forrester, the narrator of the story also struggles with an inner conflict of his secret resentment of his best friend Phineas (Finny). Phineas struggles with the disbelief that he can never be of any use to the war efforts with a “busted leg.”
Gene Forrester, the main character in the book, returns to his old prep school-Devon- that he attended some fifteen years earlier. While there he remembers the incident that changed his life. In the summer of 1942, Gene and his friends stayed at their prep school for the summer session. His best friend in those days was a boy named Phineas, or Finny. During that time World War II was going on and the sixteen-year old boys were trying to preserve the peace in their lives, before they would be old enough to be drafted into the war-just one year later. One day Finny, the best athlete in the school, came up with the crazy idea to jump out of a tree into a river. All of the seventeen-year olds had accomplished this task because it was a mandatory test for the war. Phineas, naturally was the first sixteen-year old to conquer this feat; so Gene was the second. None of the other boys ever tried the jump. After a while the two made it an almost day-to-day activity. The two boys were a lot alike, but Gene had this underlying resentment of Finny and he felt that Finny was deliberately trying to make him do badly in school because he was constantly dragging Gene along with him to go jump out of the tree. One time Finny decided that he and Gene should do a double jump, since that had never been done before. While up on the limb, Finny is the further out then Gene, and Gene gets this sudden impulse to shake the limb, which sends Finny plummeting into the shallow part of the river, breaking his leg. After the accident, Finny could never play any sports again; merely being able to walk is a blessing. For the duration of the ...
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...t contribute to any of the war efforts himself. He wrote to every group that was associated to the war and fighting for the peace, but he always got the same reply saying that they had no use of a person with a crippled leg. Gene finally wakes up to reality when Finny dies. He realizes the way of life that he was living while a Devon, and the type of person that he had become. After Finny died though, Gene discovers that he created a war between himself and Finny that never existed.
The author gets his point across and does a very good job at it. The book was very interesting and enlightening. It makes the reader think about their friendships and their life in general. People should not let little things rule their lives. Underlying resentment could build up to something very dangerous and destructive. The reader also learns from this book that there is a big world out there and one needs to become mature enough to fulfill their adulthood duties. The author lastly shows that everyone is fighting their own personal war, but how someone handles it is based on their maturity and their knowledge of knowing the difference between imagination and reality.
The controversy began almost one hundred years ago. Between 1801 and 1812, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed several sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens and shipped them to England, where he sold them to the British Museum in 1816. 167 years later, Melina Mercouri, Greek Minister of Culture, requested that the “Elgin” Marbles be returned. This request sparked one of the greatest debates the art world has ever known. For the past two decades, people have argued over who has the rights to these Marbles. The Greek position is certainly understandable from a cultural and emotional point of view. However, from the standpoint of legality and logic, it is hard to make a solid case against the Marbles’ continued presence in Britain.
In the beginning of the novel, Gene, is a clueless individual. He sees the worst in people and lets his evil side take over not only his mind but also his body. During the tree scene, Gene convinces himself that Finny isn’t his friend, tricking himself into thinking that Finny is a conniving foil that wants to sabotage his academic merit. Gene is furthermore deluded that every time Finny invites Gene somewhere it’s to keep him from studying and doing well. Finny has a reputation for being the the best athlete in school, and Gene attempts to counterbalance Finny’s power by being the best student. After a while of joining Finny’s activities, Gene thinks that Finny is intentionally trying to make him fail out of school. He starts to dislike Finny and his activities, and Gene starts interrupt...
Keesling, Catherine M., The Votive Statues of the Athenian Acropolis, Cambridge: The University Press, 2003. Print.
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). Another of the principal themes in this novel is the theme of maturity.
After reading Sir Ken Robinson 's book "Creative Schools The Grassroots Revolution That 's transforming Education" the reader can visualize several examples about how to change the actual educational system. He analyzes the process of education in which we are involved and how this one could be replaced with a creative one, which encourages students to be creative in all spheres and subjects; instead, prepare them for standardized tests. Education should be a process where students learn gradually at their own level. The author defines it as " organized programs of learning … that young people need to know, understand and able to do things that they wouldn 't if left to their own devices" (Robinson, p 17) Also, he suggest and analyze, in base of his experience, how education needs to be transformed in order to benefit students and prepare them for life, instead guide them through the straight line of standardized tests. He pointed the importance of teaching and education itself, and how creativity can be a key factor that makes students engage with the learning process.
After leaving the Misty Mountains the dwarves reach the Great Forest of Mirkwood where Gandalf tells them not to stray from the path or they will surely be lost. Gandalf leaves on an errand but will reunite with the dwarves later. In the forest the dwarves begin hearing sounds and they can faintly see what looks like a fire from a wood elf camp. They again leave their path and get lost and are captured by giant spiders. Except for Bilbo, he slipped on the ring and became invisible. He found where the spiders took the dwarves and began stealthily killing them one by one. Bilbo saved the dwarves from certain death using his new found confidence and magical power in the ring.
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.
A Creativity Researcher For More Than 30 Years, ihaly Csikszentmihalyi Is A Professor Of Human Development And Education In The Department Of Psychology At The University Of Chicago. He Has Written 13 Books, Including The Best-Seller Flow: The Psychology Of Optimal Experience (Harper Collins, 1991). Here Are Highlights Of His Books “Creativity”. This Book Is About What Makes Life Worth Living. The Creative Excitement Of The Artist At Her Easel Or The Scientist In The Lab Comes As Close To The Ideal Fulfillment As We All Hope To, And So Rarely Do. Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Interviewed More Then Ninety Of Possibly The Most Interesting People In The World - People Like Actor Ed Asner, Authors Robertson Davies And Nadine Gordimer, Scientist Jonas Salk And Linus Pauling, Senator Eugene Mccarthy - Who Have Changed The Way People In Their Fields Think And Work To Find Out How Creativity Has Been A Force In Their Lives. The Author Defines Creativity In A Mode He Designates As “Capital C”, Distinct From Individual Creative Impulses Or Acts That Occur Without Initiating Significant Cultural Change. The Creativity With A Capital C That Is Of Interest To Csikszentmihalyi Is The Act Of Creativity By Which Culture And Cultural Evolution Are Seminally Altered. What Made Galileo And Einstein Think Otherwise And But Couldn’t It Be This? What If They Hadn’t? They Aren’t Around To Ask. But There Are Others Who Are. Creativity Provides A Groundbreaking Overview Of Those Characteristics Shared By Some Of The Most Extraordinary Visionaries Of Our Most Recent Century, Painstakingly Gleaned From Hundreds Of Hours Of Personal Interviews. Finally, It Proposes Ways In Which We Can Capitalize On These Commonalities In Order To Further Creativity In O...
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,
Albert Einstein once said “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that is it stupid.” Sir Ken Robinson stated that schools are destroying children 's creativity with their curriculum, there are many facts that support this idea. Students are required to think a specific way, prepare the way teachers want them to be prepared. Students also have their own opinion, because they are not afraid to be wrong, and need a way to move forward.
The Greeks finished building an exquisite temple to their beloved goddess, Athena in the year 432 BCE. (Sayre 60). The name of this enriched, unique temple was the Parthenon. The Parthenon took the Greeks approximately fifteen years to complete and as Pericles stated, it was built to give gratitude to their goddess Athena for the salvation of their city, Athens and all of Greece in the Persian Wars (Sayre 60). It was also a symbol of their power and superiority among other cultures. It was something the Greeks took great pride in and recognized it to a great extent. The Parthenon was built on the highest point of the city of Athens to look over the precious Greek city. On the exterior walls of the Parthenon there was beautiful artwork that adorned the walls, also known as the Parthenon Frieze (“The Parthenon Frieze”, par 1). According to the National Geographic video, “Parthenon Marbles Battle”, two thousand years after the Parthenon was built, in the late 1600's the Parthenon was blown up during a war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, which left the Parthenon almost in complete ruins. Then, in the early 1800's, there came Lord Elgin, who was a huge fanatic of Greek history. Because Greece was currently under conquest by the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin made the Ottoman Empire a deal and bought the remains of the Parthenon Frieze artwork along with other sculptures as well. Elgin sent these unique sculptures of art work back to his country, England. Since then these sculptures became known as the "Elgin Marbles", and currently sit in the British Museum at London (“What are the 'Elgin Marbles”, par 1). However, do these fine pieces of artwork truly belong to Elgin? There has been a lot of controversy throughout the years of whet...
In this notable Ted Talk video "Do schools kill creativity?", Sir Ken Robinson discusses how public education systems demolish creativity because they believe it is essential to the academic growth and success of students. Robinson created a broad arrange of arguments to persuade the viewers to take action on this highly ignored issue, and he primarily focuses on how important creativity is. There are classes within schools that help utilize creativity, but they are not taken seriously by adults in society. Therefore, the value of creative knowledge decreases. Robinson uses an unusual combination of pathos and ethos to make an enjoyable dispute for implementing an education system that nurtures rather than eats away at creativity.
In conclusion to some up this essay the term ‘creativity’ will always cause a debate in the educational system as. There will always be difficulty defining it as many use the term too loosely to have a definitive meaning. It requires risk taking, it is difficult to portray creativity when schools are so obsessed with right or wrong answers for ways of doing things. Society teaches us the risks are bad because the government and its policies interfere with our own choices and decisions.
According to Google, creativity is defined as “the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.” In his TED Talk, which is one of “the most popular talks of all time”, Sir Ken Robinson discusses how public education systems degrade creativity as an essential component within the academic growth of all students. Robinson is a creativity expert and an author who writes books about creativity in school systems. His expertise in the field of school systems and creativity justifies his opinion on the subject. Robinson concentrates on the significance of creativity by creating a variety of strong arguments. His main contention is that “creativity now is as important in education as literacy” (Robinson).
There is an overwhelming amount of evidence of the human race realtion to, creativity and that we all have an interest in education. Education is so important to us because it is the only thing we can use for this unpredicted future. All children have talents, but the education system crushes our creativity because we are taught to think a certain way. Due to the fear of being wrong has led children to no longer be creative which is why many adults lose that “capacity” to be able to be creative. The very few children who are allowed to continue using their creativity tend to not to be as dissatisfied their lives as much as other adults who were not able to pursue passions they truly enjoyed.