Separate Peace: Homoerotic Theory And Hidden Love

A Separate Peace: Homoerotic Theory and Hidden Love John Knowles was a very well known American author for his most popular novel, A Separate Peace, published in 2003. Knowles does not hold back when writing descriptions of characters or their emotions. This is very important for the novel because it lets readers visualize the emotions the characters feel and how they view each other. Knowles describes his own use of this literary technique in A Separate Peace by using the two main characters, Gene and Finny, and the setting of the novel, an all boys school named Devon Prep. During their time at Devon Prep, 1942, the second World War is taking place. Gene and Finny have been best friends their whole lives, but this summer session sparked a

This means that when one feels as though they sexually have feelings for another of the same sex or feel as though they may have feelings for them. During many instances homosexual panic is a fear that someone knows of two same sex people’s feelings for eachother. Going to Devon basically sets up Gene and Finny into this tangle of love and the one person who may know their feelings for eachother is Leper Lepellier. In James McGavran’s Fear's Echo and Unhinged Joy: Crossing Homosocial Boundaries in A Separate Peace he quotes Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in saying, “...the cultural paradox that while boys and men are expected to study, play, work, and fight together--both in competition and cooperation--they are absolutely forbidden to engage in sexual relations with each other” (McGavran). This explains that boys at boarding schools were expected to be together every day and never be able to see women, but were also not allowed to have sexual desires for one another. This forced them to hide their feelings or so be kicked out of school. This theory is not only present in many schools today but many other people have based their articles on the same topics. As shown in, Refusing the Queer Potential: John Knowles's A Separate

Although Knowles never told us, post-death of Phineas, if Gene had truly loved him he shows us in the first few pages of the novel. Gene comes back a few years later to Devon and goes to the two main places where he has made his most tragic memories at school with Phineas. “So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all—plus c’est la même chose, plus ça change. Nothing endures, not a tree, not love, not even a death by violence” (Knowles 14). This shows that after all of these years Finny still runs through Gene’s mind and that Finny had a large impact on Gene’s life both physically and emotionally. Many people read this novel and have many questions of the boys sexuality throughout, the consequences, and their feelings. “What can that deep, truthful level of feeling be but that the boys, far more than "best friends," are in love with each other? And what can stop the sexual expression of such love but what Sedgwick calls homosexual panic” (McGavran)? Gene will never know the answers to these questions because of the time period the boys were in at the all boys boarding school and not being able to express their feelings; now it was too