Summary: A Separate Peace By John Knowles

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). Knowles shows that youth is isolated from the rest of the world. Growing up, then, involves a difficult transition from this sheltered environment to the harsh realities of war, hatred, and fear. When the world is immersed in hatred and war, this perfectly

While the world felt like it was changing, it was in fact staying the same. Gene himself, however, continued to grow and so even though the school stayed the same it seemed to Gene like it had changed: now the "giants of his childhood" didn't seem like giants at all. Critics that looked at Knowles’ work were compelled to analyze the importance of the school as a setting that influenced the lives of the children that lived there. “Such a school is a place for education and growth. Here it also represents the last place of freedom and safety for the boys, guarding their last days of childhood and standing as ‘the tame fringe of the last and greatest wilderness,’ adulthood”(Alton). Devon's initial isolation from the rest of the world is as important as its peaceful atmosphere. The boys are physically sequestered from adults and from war, but this barrier is an impermanent one. As long as there is peace, the boys are free to be separated from the outside world. Yet, when they are finally confronted by the war, they have to grow up, and the strain changes them from children into