Negative Peace?
Can something as positive as peace, sadly, turn negative? Throughout the book Peace like a River by Leif Enger, a negative mood, surprisingly, is established. When the story itself does maintain a positive influence, it’s almost as if the negativity takes a higher dominance. In this novel, narrated by the middle child, Reuben, who has severe asthma, the reader is introduced to the very unique Land family. Jeremiah, the father and main provider of this family has three children, two boys and a girl; Reuben and Davy are both older than their sister Swede. However, Helen, the wife of Jeremiah and the mother of the three kids, left the family when Jeremiah turned his career path around to become a school janitor. The Land family, however, is plagued by trouble, inducing the negativity of the novel. It all started when Jeremiah was cleaning the boys locker-room after a football game; later, he heard screaming coming from the girls locker-room. When Jeremiah arrived at the scene, he witnessed a brutal sight; Davy's girlfriend Dolly was being abused by Israel Finch and Tommy Basca, two of the town bullies. In an act of resolution, Jeremiah beat the boys up, but the high school dropouts swore revenge. To get away from the brutal scene, the Land family then takes a trip to where Jeremiah grew up, North Dakota. Jeremiah's good friend August Schultz rented the family a farmhouse for a couple of days, helping the Lands in a time of need. Nonetheless, upon arrival back to their house, the Lands found their front door tarred, unquestionably the work of Finch and Basca. More sadness induces when the two bullies kidnap Swede on her birthday, although she was returned, Swede is later seen with bruises and doesn't seem quite the...
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...elpless, financially and emotionally.
Finally, throughout this novel, a negative mood tends to plague the storyline. Once, something positive tries to make its way through the darkness, it is almost immediately shot down by a negative turning point. Right from the start of this novel, a negative perspective is induced when it seems as if Reuben won’t live as a result of his puny defective lungs. Furthermore, the continuous tormenting of the land family through the actions of Israel Finch and Tommy Basca resulted in even more palpable negativity. Lastly, economic depression also tortured the Land family as they continued to strive to make ends meet throughout their daily lives. As a result of the lack of positivity in Peace like a River, it is safe to say that the novel possesses an extremely negative mood; yet, this fact might soon change within the storyline.
Friendship is a necessity throughout life whether it is during elementary school or during adulthood. Some friendships may last a while and some may last for a year; it depends on the strength of the bond and trust between the two people. In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the main characters, Gene and Finny, did not have a pure friendship because it was driven by envy and jealousy, they did not feel the same way towards each other and they did not accurately understand each other.
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.
I identified the first major player in the novel as Phineas. The quote I feel began his role reads: “No one but Phineas could think up such a crazy idea. He of course saw nothing the slightest bit intimidating about it. He wouldn’t, or wouldn’t admit it if he did. Not Phineas.” (14) This quote sets the reader up by describing the sort of person Finny : a daredevil with wild ideas and an air of fearlessness about him.
The American Library Association defines a challenge to a book as, “an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based on the objections of a person or group” (“About Banned). A Separate Peace by John Knowles was one of the many challenged books of its time; it was ranked sixty-seventh on the American Literature Association’s list of most challenged classic novels The book continues to be challenged all over the country and in 2013 it is ranked thirty-fifth on the summer of banned books list .(ALA). A Separate Peace chronicles the life of a boy named Gene Forrester, a student of the prestigious Devon School in New Hampshire. In Gene’s first year at Devon. He becomes close friends with his daredevil of a roommate Finny. Secretly Gene somewhat
Steinbeck and Hodgins both examine the idea of “promised land” where their characters, Steinbeck’s Joad family and Hodgins’s returned soldiers, hope to find both joy and prosperity. The characters, however, later learn that the idea of the “promised land” is simply just that - an idea - because it does not exist. While the “promised land” is different in both novels, it being a beautiful home and paying jobs in The Grapes of Wrath and actual land for settlement in Broken Ground, it represents the same hope for both novels – the hope of new, positive beginnings. Both Steinbeck and Hodgins lead readers to believe that the relocation of their characters is setting the stage for a turn of events in their lives, a turn for the better. This change, though, ...
"Reuben Land, in the name of the living God I am telling you to breathe," (Enger 3). From the astounding words of Leif Enger's novel, Peace Like A River, he takes readers on a journey of an asthmatic life of eleven-year old, Reuben Land. This ailment influences his character to become troubled from the effects of asthma, dependent on others’ aid, and hopeful that a miracle will better a burdensome situation.
“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.
...r own “sweet” part in the most bitter of times by writing about the his personal experiences of discovering human kindness during the Vietnam War. The deepest moral of the novel is hope. He tries to send out a message that people will be able to endure anything if they can find hope. When the shock of Kiowa’s death shocked O’Brien, he found hope that things would get better and recovered to later honor his friend through writing and freeing his spirit. When Mitchell Sanders was stuck in living hell, he takes a second to notice how perfect nature was, despite the ongoing war, and understands that nature and life shall never cease existence and uses it to motivate himself. This revelation and positivity of all the joyous moments that are possible during war make this story easily relatable to any person of the “real world” that has had to endure anguish and suffering.
From a more romantic perspective one might be inclined to say the main theme behind this story is choices made by man as a unit when obstacles and circumstances arise, perhaps perseverance through hardship. But this book rarely displays romantic or idealistic interactions among the characters or moments in the plot. Although there is one example of slight romantisicm at end, the book for the most part is an excellent illustration of naturalism in a piece of literature. To shine this main theme under a naturalistic light, the reader must be allowed to examine the deep psychological, emotional and physical connection between man and his land so often demonstrated and greatly emphaisized throughout the book. The cliffsnotes state that this connection is a basic fundament to the Jeffersonian agrarian theory. A great example of when Steinbeck incorporates this philosophy is when the representatives of the bank are telling the tenant farmers that they need to get off the land. They feel that since they lived and died on the land, it is rightfully theirs. "Funny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is in him, it's part of him, and it's like him (37)." Since the bond between the farmer and his property is so strong, once it is broken the people loose their self-respect, dignity, and meaning. Steinbeck uses this idea to foreshadow and help explain the events of Grandpa's death and to further drive the ideas Casy preaches. Casy suggests at the funeral that Granpa died the moment he was torn from his land. He also speculates that only if the band together and make sacrifices for the unit, the Joads and the Wilsons can they survive. "We on'y got a hundred an' fifty dollars. They take forty to bury Grampa an' we won't get to California (140)." They decide that for the family the best thing to do is to bury him on the road.
reflects upon the theme of the novel. As it highlights the fact that if people in the society
In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the main character, Finny, is in the infirmary room for a “shattered” leg. “...One of his legs, which had been shattered”(60). This happened when Finny and Gene were trying to jump off of the same branch into the river. Finny and Gene had been very good friends and would always hang out. Finny was very athletic and Gene was known as a nerd who tried to hang out with Finny to become popular. Gene had always looked up to FInny but as they hung out more and more Gene started to become jealous. Finny suggested that they both go and jump off of the same branch together. Suddenly Gene started to shake the branch and Finny lost his balance and fell off the branch “shattering” his leg. Gene didn’t try to save him
... is reminiscing about the fact that she messed up and it cost the boy’s life. The overall tone in the end of the novel is depressing as the governess’s actions and attitudes about current events tend to reflect the tone of the situation.
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.
Faith is belief in what you cannot see and is a common theme shown throughout this book. The Lands family go through many different personal trials throughout their lives. Reuben had much faith in his own father, while Jeremiah never wavered in his faith with God because he always trusted in Him. But, Davy, his son, only believed in himself because he continued to run away from his issues because he believed that he could deal with them on his own. In the book, Peace Like a River, Reuben, Jeremiah, and Davy apply their faith to different people.
The events in the novel are predicated upon the death of Joel's mother. The account of his mother's death and the upheaval it caused for him (p 10 ) is more poignant to a reader who has experienced the untimely death of a parent than to one who has not. The reader who has experienced the loss can identify with everyone “always smiling” and with the unexplainable changes in one's own behavior toward others as one adjusts to the emptiness.