A Peace Stand For Peace : A Peaceful Stand For Peace

The novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles is about learning and it reveals that people have to have the bad to see the good. This thematic statement connects to both the book and the world that we live in today. Many people want everything to be perfect and beautiful but the hard truth is that it will never completely be that way. Life isn’t going to be the way every stroke was placed on the perfect painting of life that everyone has in there head which was handcrafted from their wildest dreams. Their may be some slippery patches but good will follow close behind.

cold blast for the enemy. The winter lives to destroy the warmth of the summer

John Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace is about a few boys at a boarding school in New Hampshire. The story is centered around the friendship of two boys, Gene and Finny, at a boarding school in New Hampshire. Although in the beginning of their friendship Gene did not trust Finny, by the time he dies Gene feels as if a part of him has died, showing that he still felt closely bonded to him after all they had been through.

John Knowles’ “A Separate Peace” takes place at a boarding school during World War II. Best friends Gene and Finny have been inseparable during their time at the Devon School. This is until reality hits Gene, and he slowly starts to realize that he is inferior to his best friend. Through the unbalanced friendship between two teenagers in “A Separate Peace,” Knowles illustrates that a loss of identity may be present in a relationship if there is an unequal amount of power.

In the novel A Separate Peace, the tree is the primary symbol used to describe the hardships, adventure, and danger of the lives of the characters. While the tree is not the only symbol used by Knowles, it is the one that Gene spends most of his time reflecting on. To Gene, the tree is “tremendous” and “a steely black steeple.” But for Finny, the tree symbolizes his downfall and eventually his death. By the end of the novel, the tree has lost its significance to Gene and has become smaller and less realistic. Another big symbol in the novel is the war. World War II was of no real meaning to Gene and his classmates when they were juniors because that is all that they did was play war. But by the time their senior year had begun, the war was real and the draft was coming for them. For Finny in particular, the war symbolized his destiny as a hero because he wanted nothing more than to be an athlete and a warrior. Another primary symbol used by Knowles is the separation between the summer and winter sessions at Devon because while the summer session was filled with laid back and innocent fun, the winter session was a dark time with preparation for war. And, the last symbol recognized is the fall of Finny from the tree on the riverbank. This fall not only symbolizes the end of childly innocent times and the beginning of war filled adulthood, but it also symbolizes the eventual death of Finny. In all, the presence

A Separate Peace, chapter three starts of with Gene talking about how Finny saved his life when he fell out of the tree. On the other hand, the only reason Gene was in that tree to begin with was because of Finny, “I didn’t need to feel any tremendous rush of gratitude towards Phineas”(Knowles 33). If it were not for Finny there is no way Gene would be anywhere near that tree. Also, if Gene was not so worried about pleasing Finny all of the time, he would not have jumped from the tree in the first place. After all of this happens and as the club now starts to grow, Finny decides he needs to start recruiting other members for the Suicide Society.

In the novel, A Separate Peace, many of the characters face identity issues that impact and shape their everyday interactions. Although each character's situation diverges slightly from one another, they all posses similar dilemmas when finding their distinctiveness or cohesiveness in society. The reader will obtain psychological insight and a full perception of the characters after they read "Basics of Identity" by Shahram Heshmat, "Authenticity and Identity" by Robert Edelsein, and "Are you Having an Identity Crisis" by Susan Krauss Whitbourne.

Overcoming internal barriers is a struggle humans typically endure. The novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles focuses on the friendship between two teenage boys, Gene and Phineas, who are the exact opposite of one another. It is told from Gene’s point of view as he journeys through adolescence while attending one of the most prestigious boarding schools in America during World War II, Devon. Gene learns that when times are difficult he can move past his struggles by latching onto an idea, hope, or an essence of peace. As he matures, it is clear that his friendship with Phineas has played a key role in helping Gene discover and accept who he is because he helped him to unveil the enemy that was inside the whole time

The theme suggested in the closing paragraph of the novel A Separate Peace is that people create their own enemy and then they defend themselves laboriously and obsessively against their imaginary enemy. They develop a particular frame of mind to allay the fear that arises while facing their nonexistent enemy. In the novel, the protagonist, Gene, tries to fight a war with his best friend, Finny, not realizing that the enemy he sees is not Finny but is his own insecurity.

#1 conflict “I felt betrayed.I felt more alone than ever. By the end of the fourth day at military school, I had run away four times” (Moore 90).

In the 1950s, 15 years after his graduation from Devon, an all boys school in New Hampshire, Gene Forrester returns. While walking through the campus, Gene thinks of his experiences at Devon during World War II, especially during the summer of 1942, when he was a 16 year old boy.

They can take the path of Martin Luther King, Jr., and advocate for societal change through peace and the complete separation of race from character. Or, they can lean toward Malcolm X, and achieve their ends by any means necessary. Both exhibited incredible moral courage. Both were killed for standing up for what they believed in. However, nobody can deny that race relations in the United States are deteriorating, and it should be apparent that this is a result of activists taking the path of Malcolm X. Their courage in standing up for what they see as justice is admirable. But today we see so much concentration on the amount of a certain group involved in something that we forget King's individual. We see protests turning into violent riots and chants to kill police (French). And we see Black Lives Matter demanding "independent Black political power and Black self-determination in all areas of society"(Chan). These are all acts not of moral courage, but of moral cowardice. With these ideas of destroying the individual, social justice through violence, and not integration but segregation, today's activists are betraying Martin Luther King's beautiful legacy with their straying into the realm of Malcolm X. So we have a decision to make: will we devolve our civilized society by using violence for political gain, or will we exhibit the highest form of moral courage in heeding Justin Trudeau and fighting our societal enemies without

When the present generation is asked about World War II, minds automatically go to Hitler, the Nazis and possibly one of the many semi-terrible movies “based” on true events. This generation is completely unattached to the naive soldiers who fought against the now notorious Hitler and Nazis. The horror the youth of the time faced is completely unimaginable, except when told through a realistic story highlighting the emotional trauma the young boys endured. A Separate Peace by John Knowles highlights the multiple meanings of a separate peace, symbolized by the setting, characters, and plot elements within the story showing the true trauma of growing up in a war-torn country.

In the novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the protagonist, Gene Forrester “battled” within himself to find “a separate peace” and in this process directed his emotions at Phineas, his roommate. Forrester and Phineas formed the illusion of a great companionship, but there was a “silent rivalry” between them in Forrester’s mind. Self deceptions in Forrester led him to believe that Phineas was “out to get him” (Forrester). Subconsciously Forrester jounced the limb of the tree and forced Phineas to fall and break his leg. Phineas found out the truth of his “accident” with the help of Leper Lepellier and Brinker Hadley, who were friends that attended Devon High School. Gene Forrester’s conflict between his

Kaeprnick says he did this because of the racism against the blacks going on right now with the cop shootings. I’m not saying that some cops are not targeting blacks but there are more respectful ways to make a stand. You should not disrespect the country. It also does not help when they have riots down south. If people keep making more of a mess with this subject it will never get better. If a cop targeted someone in my family and killed them I would be angry so I know where this is all coming from. Making a peaceful stand would make more of an impact than what’s going on now. They can’t let their feelings get the best of them.