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How does war affect children
Significant in young adult literature
Character analysis a separate piece
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World War II influenced the boys in A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, by making them grow and mature more quickly than they would have had there not been a war. The war made some boys stronger and readier for whatever life would bring, while in others it disabled them to the point that they could not handle simple tasks. These boys are only a small percentage of the casualties brought about by World War II. The maturing influence of the war on Finny was a considerable one, even though it did not seem to the other boys that he was growing up at all. Gene's jealousy leads him to the point where he has to destroy Finny's greatest asset, his skill in sports, just so that he does not have to be the "popular guy's friend. Gene knocks Finny off the tree limb and breaks his leg. Everyone at Devon except for Finny suspects that Gene caused Finny to fall off the branch, not Finny's loss of balance. Finny's outlook on the whole situation is very grown up. He did not blame anyone but himself, even though it was not his fault at all. Finny seems as though he will never grow up because he is so immature, with his silly denial of the war's existence, and his habit of always coming up with strange things to do just for fun. Inside he is suffering with the anger and hurt of being excluded from the one thing that he wants to do most, fight in the war. This is an excellent example of how the war suddenly made the boys grow up into men. They had to face adulthood, and in order to do that, they had to become adults. Another boy in the story who was made to grow up by the war was Leper. When he sees the movies about the ski troops, he thinks that it looks fun, so he surprises everyone by enlisting. Leper did not quite know what he was getting into when he enlisted. He thought that it looked like a fun ski trip; he could serve his country and ski around the world at the same time. Most average teenagers are not faced with the pressure of a war and shortages of everything, and so Leper had to grow in order to handle the pressure of the war. But, in the process of growing, the pressure becomes too great. After a short time in the army, Leper goes crazy, and is labeled as a section eight discharge. But instead of having to go through that dishonorable fate, he escapes. Escaping is not a very good example of how much Leper grew, but it does show that a kid can grow up only so fast. The third, and last, character that shows growing from the war is Gene. At one point, Gene and Brinker decide to enlist together, but Gene backs out of it because he feels that he is not ready. This shows that Gene has begun to mature. Gene feels that he has some debt to pay or some peace to settle, perhaps, before he ever goes to war. He shakes the limb with Finny on it as a search for that peace. He thinks that if he gets rid of Finny, even though Finny is his best friend, that everything will be fine. But it is not. It only makes things worse because soon after Finny is injured, Gene discovers that Finny never meant to overshadow him, or force him into doing anything he did not want to. It takes almost the whole novel for Gene to finally mature enough to go to war and fight for his country. It is not his fault that he does not mature as quickly as some of the boys, but he is not rushing into things. He is finding and fighting for peace within himself before he ever sets foot on a battlefield. These three boys are examples of the way that young, inexperienced boys were forced to grow into a frame of maturity that no young men should ever have to go through. They were boys one day and had to be men the next because of the stupidity of the world. These, and many other boys completely skipped over college, and missed building lives on their own. They were just forced into a situation, and made to cope with their surroundings, without any warning of how bad it would be, and how much courage it would take.
feels that he has to get revenge. This anger leads to Gene jouncing Finny out of the tree.
The evolution of a child to adult is a long and complex process. There is another transitional step that goes in the middle of these two periods. In warlike terms, such as those used in the settings of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and John Knowles's A Separate Peace, that step could be classified as being a soldier. W.N. Hodgson acknowledges this progression as well, in the poem "Before Action." The speaker begs first for God to "make [him] a soldier" (line 8) and then once he is a soldier he asks God to "make [him] a man" (16). Soldiers aren't quite children anymore; they've seen too much pain, death, and horror to maintain their innocence as children do. However, they aren't really men yet either. In A Separate Peace and All Quiet on the Western Front, the characters all go through this process of growing up, where they begin as children and proceed on to being soldiers, finally emerging as strong, insightful men by the end of the book.
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...
War slowly begins to strip away the ideals these boy-men once cherished. Their respect for authority is torn away by their disillusionment with their schoolteacher, Kantorek who pushed them to join. This is followed by their brief encounter with Corporal Himmelstoss at boot camp. The contemptible tactics that their superior officer Himmelstoss perpetrates in the name of discipline finally shatters their respect for authority. As the boys, fresh from boot camp, march toward the front for the first time, each one looks over his shoulder at the departing transport truck. They realize that they have now cast aside their lives as schoolboys and they feel the numbing reality of their uncertain futures.
For Finny and Gene, the summer session at Devon was a time of blissful happiness and a time where they allowed themselves to become utterly overtaken by their own illusions. The summer session was the complete embodiment of peace and freedom, and Gene saw Devon as a haven of peace. To them, the war was light years away and was almost like a dream than an actual event. At Devon, it was hard for them to imagine that war could even exist. Finny and Gene forged the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session and acted out in the most wild and boisterous ways. Missing dinner or being absent from school for days to go to the beach did not even earn them a reprimand. “I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen....We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to prese...
He can only hear the sound of the cars, buses and plane noises. He can
Chris and Finny have the same drive to try something that they had never done before and breakaway, much like other young adults and that is “why [it] has always been so easy for nations to recruit young men to go to war” (Krakauer 182). Finny, an adventurous, daring boy at Devon wants to be a participant in the World War, like the other boys his age, but is not able to due to his leg injury. In most countries, the average age of people in the army is 18-20, usually young adults. It has always been easy to have people involved in the wars because many young adults want to prove that they are old enough to be independent and free from their parents and society’s expectations. Finny wrote to the army and the navy to try to be a part of the war, because he will “hate it everywhere if [he is] not in this war” as a result of the daring and confident side that he and many other boys of that time had (Knowles 103). Finny and Chris McCandless wanted to leave the simple life that they were leading and live a life of adventure. Many adventurers would agree that living a life full of unknown and adventure is the most exciting life that anybody could live, and that is what Chris and Finny wanted to achieve. Finny and Chris want to escape the horrid life that they lead and
Tess spent the worst days of her life. But at the same time she began
toy car in his hand, he will hit it against places and throw it around
In the novel Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen, several, if not all of her characters, can verify the idea that in order to achieve happiness one must abandon their pride and in turn, replace it with self-respect accompanied by some humility. In addition, tolerance and mutual respect must replace one’s prejudice.
Gene jounces a limb of the tree he and Finny were standing on, causing Finny to fall and break his leg. Gene's jealousy of Finny's perfection causes him to have childish feelings of resentment and hatred. After Finny's leg was broken, Gene realized "that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between" (Knowles 51) him and Finny. Gene looked at himself and became conscious of what a terrible, self-absorbed friend he had been. Understanding there was no competition caused him to discard the majority of his feelings of jealousy. Getting rid of these feelings made him grow-up because he was no longer spending countless hours believing a childish game was being played between Finny and him. Gene began to understand more of Finny's goodness and love towards all, making him strive to be more like Finny.
World War I had a great effect on the lives of Paul Baumer and the young men of his generation. These boys’ lives were dramatically changed by the war, and “even though they may have escaped its shells, [they] were destroyed by the war” (preface). In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer and the rest of his generation feel separated from the other men, lose their innocence, and experience comradeship as a result of the war.
that he is courageous and not a proud man. All of which portray to the
The poor peddler John Durbeyfield is stunned to learn that he is the descendent of an ancient noble family, the d'Urbervilles. He and his wife decide to send their oldest daughter, Tess, to the d'Urberville mansion, where they hope Mrs. d'Urberville will make her fortune. In reality, Mrs. d'Urberville is no relation to Tess at all; her husband, the merchant Simon Stokes, simply changed his name to d'Urberville after he retired. But Tess does not know this, and when the lascivious Alec d'Urberville, Mrs. d'Uberville's son, procures her a job tending fowls on the d'Urberville estate, Tess has no choice but to accept.
“Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.” Thomas Hardy believed beyond the physical element of object, their lies a more important symbolic meaning. Thomas Hardy was a renowned transitional poet with a style between classicism and romanticism. He was born in the mid-1800s in Higher Bockhampton, an English village. Hardy’s upbringing contributed greatly to his views on the world around him, in a symbolic manner. His father was a stonemason and a violinist, and his mother encouraged him to follow his passions. Hardy was first married for 38 years to Emma Gifford, who inspired many of his poetic ideas. He later married his secretary Florence Dugdale two years after Emma died. (http://www.universalteacher.org .uk/poetry/hardy.htm#13)