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What is the message of a Separate Peace by John Knowles
What is the message of a Separate Peace by John Knowles
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When the main character Finny dies in A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles does not put the burden of the blame on one single character but shows each character's thoughts of the accident. Finny and his best friend Gene go to an all boys school in New Hampshire. Finny is an extroverted star athlete who is friends with everyone, while Gene is more of an introvert who focuses on his academic career. One summer afternoon while Gene and Finny are walking along a river, Finny persuades Gene to climb with him to the top of a tree he spots and jump into the water below. Finny tragically stumbles on a limb on the top of the tree and fall off, shattering his leg.
During the late 1930’s and early to mid1940’s, Allies were fighting the axis powers in WW2. Along with the high tensions amongst countries, there was also high tension amongst civilian lives. John Knowles’ A Separate Peace clearly shows the tension within a friendship similar to that of Britain’s and Germany’s relationship. Through Allegory, John Knowles shows the tension within two friends that eventually leads to their inevitable demise. The symbolic items in the book are: Gene, the main character, Finny, the deuteragonist, and Finny’s pink shirt.
Denial the action of declaring something to be untrue. In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles the author uses internal conflict, point of view, and tragedy to illustrate denial and how it can fool with people's mind. Like how people can make things up or faded from what the truth really is and have thoughts if your friend is the true friend. One quote that shows denial is, “Don’t be a sap, there isn’t any war ”(115).
The author, John Knowles, in the novel, “A Separate Peace”, conveys the lesson of friendship, or rather the lack of, with his use of diction. The strategy in which the author phrased certain sections of dialogue between Finny and Gene is there to show that Finny cares for Gene despite Gene’s obvious discontent. The friendship is a one-way street, and the author uses diction to represent this unbalance in the relationship, leading to friendship being a key theme throughout the book. There exist many examples of this diction throughout the novel, one of these is during their illegal beach trip. “I hope you’re having a pretty good time here.
In the natural world spiders are often one of the most feared creatures. Humans perceive that spiders will harm them but in reality spiders are solely concerned with themselves. Humans frequently have perceived emotions without any logical reason. This concept is made evident in John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, with regard to competition. Competition is created in the mind of Gene between himself and Phineas, without any logical reason.
John Knowles, author of A Separate Peace, uses both character development and setting to support his decision in selecting the title. He uses the main characters of Gene and Phineas (Finny) and their troubled yet deeply bonded friendship as a way to illustrate the separate peace that takes place both within the boys themselves and in the friendship that is built between the two. Knowles also uses the setting of the novel to demonstrate the vast difference between the peaceful Devon School grounds and the war raging outside of the school’s walls. The title, A Separate Peace, as chosen by the author is symbolic of the main characters, Finny and Gene’s, struggle to find peace within themselves and with each other while set in a place that significantly contrasts the events of the real world.
There are, and always will be, characters in literature that constantly conform, and just want to fit in. These characters, however, are not typically the narrator, such as is true in A Separate Peace by John Knowles. The narrator, Gene, constantly changes tone throughout the novel. These changes in tone are erratic, and are seemingly random. When it’s closely examined, it becomes increasingly clear that Gene clings to and mirrors the tone of the strongest leader available.
Thought Over Truth How do you know the whole story if you were only told from one perspective? A Separate Peace is a novel by John Knowles told during World War II, from the perspective of Gene Forrester, an intelligent, but not athletic student. Gene tells his memory of his senior year at Devon School, a school which only boys attend, but is his memory the whole truth? Gene has shown us that he is misleading and biased.
WWII served as an induction to maturity for the parent generations of modern-day society. Teenagers were expected to mentally grasp the realities of war and political unrest, whether or not they witnessed the bloodshed firsthand. In John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, he accurately depicts the obligatory, young maturation that was expected of teenage boys during this time period with the protagonist, Gene. Events taking place in the United States that promoted this mental advancement include troop movement throughout the United States, which reminded citizens of the disturbing violence taking place on the other side of the world. In addition, there was the expansion of military knowledge in boys attending high school, assisting them in
Written by John Knowles, A Separate Peace, acknowledges the issues regarding identity through its four major characters: Gene, who suffers a lack of selfhood; Finny, who loses his self in an accident; Leper, who feels overlooked by his peers; and, Brinker, who deems he must live up to his family’s expectations. Though the novel is expressed in Gene’s perspective, identity is the primary theme and touches on all four characters. Furthermore, the three articles, "Are you Having an Identity Crisis?", "Basics of Identity" and, "Authenticity and Identity" all further analyze the topic. Additionally, they amalgamate with the book to describe the insecurities of the characters.
Knowles uses contrast and comparison in metaphors to connect the physical images of people and their settings to wartime emotions, showing that as the physical enmity around them grows and changes their internal fear and enemies change too. For example, Knowles uses the boys at Devon to draw a connection between adolescence and freedom from war pressures: “I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen (….) We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction” (Knowles 23-24).
Adam and Eve had a perfect Garden of Eden, until Eve ate the apple and contaminated the garden. In being tricked by the snake, Eve betrayed God’s word. Mankind has often betrayed others because of the darkness in their heart. In A Separate Peace, John Knowles uses Phineas as a sacrificial lamb to portray Gene’s savage side and demonstrate that peace can never be achieved at a worldwide level until man accepts the darkness in his own heart.
In Chapter One of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster points out that almost every trip in literature is a quest. The five elements to a quest are: a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials, and the real reason to go. Gene is the quester in A Separate Peace by John Knowles. He visited the Devon School, where he had been a student fifteen years before, to see two “fearful sites,” (Knowles 10). While at the school, he noticed that it looked new, which he found slightly unsettling, for “...it made the school look like a museum...”
In society most people have to come to terms with maturity and leave behind their innocence, but those who fail to do so perish in their identity, and those who succeed are greeted with an evolution of identity. In John Knowles’, “A Separate Peace”, characters Gene, Finny, and Leper struggle to come to terms with an evolution of identity. All of them are portrayed going through trial after trial, attempting to mature as people and ultimately find themselves evolving or perishing. Gene does succeed in evolving his identity, however Finny and Leper are not so lucky; fail to evolve and ultimately perish. In John Knowles’, “A Separate Peace” there are prime examples of those who evolve into their newfound identities and those who perish in their old ones, unable to move on.
“Freedom is the power to choose our own chains” (Rousseau). Rousseau discusses the idea that freedom gives us enough power to pick who or what has control over us, which is an idea that is continually presented in the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles. When in a position to choose, people will strive to lack personal control as a way to relieve their physical or mental pain. People like to live without control to lessen the burden of their suffering.
