Finding Peace
Peace only comes at the price of great struggle and sacrifice for most people. In essence, it only comes when you have defeated the enemy, or the enemy has defeated you. John Knowles was able to capture the subtle goal and essence of his novel by titling it A Separate Peace. A Separate Peace is a story about Gene Forrester, the protagonist of the story, and his constant struggle with the underlying emotional conflicts presented to him. He has to fight a war within his own mind that every man has to fight for himself. His battles eventually uproot underlying emotions of jealousy, envy towards his friends. These emotions then set off a series of events that change his life forever, and he has to fight more for peace amidst a world of chaos. He experiences new feelings fear, frustration, pity, and undeniable guilt. From his experiences in his last year of school at Devon, he emerges with greater strength, greater understanding, maturity, and he finds the separate peace that every man longs for.
“Phineas just walked serenely on, or rather flowed on, rolling forward ...
A persona is a mask shown to the outside world developed in relation to consciousness, to hide the darkest aspects of a psyche, known as a shadow, behind it. Shadows contrast personas by holding undesirable and unwanted memories and behaviors, but the dark side of an individual must be accepted for the individual to fully understand oneself. In the coming of age novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, narrator Gene Forrester returns to New Hampshire to visit Devon School, where he studied fifteen years ago just as World War II had begun to unfold. The narrative shifts back fifteen years ago to Gene’s days at Devon School with his best friend, Phineas, also known as Finny, as he recalls memorable events from his past. Gene’s persona and shadow
As the novel opens, Gene Forrester returns to Devon, the New Hampshire boarding school he attended during World War II. Gene has not seen Devon for 15 years, and so he notices the ways in which the school has changed since he was a student there. Strangely, the school seems newer, but perhaps, he thinks, the buildings are just better taken care of now that the war is over.
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
The role of Gene Forrester, the narrator of the novel, starts with the first line of the book. “I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oldly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before.” (9) The plot of A Separate Peace is him retelling those months at Devon, so his role began with him returning fifteen years later and seeing the school grounds, bringing back memories.
The main character in my book, A Separate Peace, is Gene Forrester. At the beginning of the book, Gene is an innocent boy, going along with everything his roommate, the outgoing and energetic Phineas, says. “What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into doing stupid things like this?” (17) During this scene in the book, Gene is questioning his decision to jump out of a very tall tree, which he was convinced to climb by Phineas. As the story continues, Gene starts to believe that Phineas is trying to sabotage him. He thinks that Phineas is doing this so that he can be better at everything. However, in reality, Phineas is honestly just trying to have fun with Gene. “You and Phineas are even already… You did hate him for beating that school swimming record, but so what? He hated you for getting an A in every course but one last term. You would have had an A except for him… Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies!” (53) After this realization, Gene is bitter toward Phineas. When the chance arrives, Gene takes it. Furious and not thinking, Gene knocks Phineas out of the tree they are both standing in. “And then my knees bent and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me… and then he tumbled sideways.” (60) After this incident, Gene feels incredibly guilty. He tries to confess to Phineas, but Finny just thinks he is crazy. He really believes that he just slipped and fell. Finally, Phineas realizes the truth and becomes furious with Gene. However, when he runs away from Gene on his already broken leg, he falls and causes another fracture. “Then these separate sounds collided into the general tumult of his body falling clumsily down the white marble steps.” (177) While ...
Gene Forrester, the narrator of the story, visited his previous school where he studied 15 years ago during the World War II. He wandered around the Devon school in New Hampshire and noticed that everything there seems to be coated with varnish and is well preserved. As he walks through the places in the school, he remembered the memories from his childhood, and he was reminded of how fearful they were. Then there, he decided to visit the places which he most closely associates with fear. The first one is the marble staircase which shows little sign of wear over the years. And the second one is the river where a specific tree is located.
In “A separate Peace” there are two wars being fought. The major war is Word War Two while the other war is the one that Gene tries to create between himself and Finny. This is war is always a single sided battle, as it is both created and fought in the mind of Gene.
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.
A strong sense of self, in the words of William Shakespeare, is “To know what we are, but not what we might be.” In the book, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the main character, Gene, ¬¬struggled with having a strong sense of self. His lack of identity negatively affected his life. The major consequence of his absent sense of self was his burning envy and hatred toward his extremely athletically gifted friend Finny. Gene’s lack of identity and hatred toward Finny led him to shake a limb if a tree that Finny was climbing. Finny fell and broke his leg. He later died when the bone marrow escaped into his blood. Gene’s behavior caused Finny’s death but there is reason to believe that Finny would have died anyway. For example, Finny could have been killed in the army, Finny’s lack of caution caused him to break his leg again, and the branch would have broken since it was already weak causing Finny to fall and die.
John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, reveals the many dangers and hardships of adolescence. The main characters, Gene, and Finny, spend their summer together at a boarding school called Devon. The two boys, do everything together, until Gene, the main character, develops a resentful hatred toward his friend Finny. Gene becomes extremely jealous and envious of Finny, which fuels this resentment, and eventually turns deadly. Knowles presents a look at the darker side of adolescence, showing jealousy’s disastrous effects. Gene’s envious thoughts and jealous nature, create an internal enemy, that he must fight. A liberal humanistic critique reveals that Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, has a self contained meaning, expresses the enhancement of life, and reveals that human nature does not change.
In A Separate Peace, John Knowles carries the theme of the inevitable loss of innocence throughout the entire novel. Several characters in the novel sustain both positive and negative changes, resulting from the change of the peaceful summer sessions at Devon to the reality of World War II. While some characters embrace their development through their loss of innocence, others are at war with themselves trying to preserve that innocence.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a complex novel that portrays war in many different forms. Gene Forrester was attending Devon School during World War II. This was a representation of different wars he was having within himself. Gene was feeling a kind of jealousy toward his friend Finny. He also felt like Finny was trying to sabotage him with relation to his schoolwork. Lastly Gene felt guilt, guilt from what was described by him as a “blind impulse” and also from having the truth revealed to him resulting in a fatal accident.
A Separate Peace sustains several different conflicts throughout the novel, both internally and externally. The emotions are constantly on a rollercoaster ride, going from happy, sad, then to resentment. Gene and Finny both have conflicting emotions about each other, resulting in diverse thoughts on one another, and issues within the friendship. The internal and external conflict by Gene and Finny are created through jealousy, insecurity, and friendship.
In John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace, the theme of loss of innocence is skillfully developed through setting, character, and symbols. This story simply details a young man's entering the adult world as all children do. Everyone suffers loss of innocence.
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.