A Separate Peace By John Knowles

In order to write a novel that continually grabs the reader’s attention, the author must establish the setting of the story. In John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, he consistently uses the setting in the novel to reinforce his, message. The story’s World War II-era setting creates an ethos of uneasiness and uncertainty for the young men preparing for war. This is seen with Gene visiting the school after the war, Phineas’ difficulty to adjust to the setting after his injury, and the numerous places that the characters go in which they escape the reality of the war.

Gene’s identity was resolved in the end. At the conclusion of the book, Gene’s older, more mature and Phineas is no longer in his life. He silences most of his pessimistic thoughts and he’s able to find himself, even though his past still looms in the back of his mind. It’s easy to get lost in who you are when life is throwing everything at you, but when it come to identity, the strain only gets

I think the main struggles he faces throughout the novel are jealously and internal guilt. Throughout the book, Gene struggles with his envy towards his best friend Finny. Even after Phineas breaks his leg, Gene is jealous of the way Finny still manages to have motivation and how Finny pretends that nothing even happened. Although Gene feels resentment for the duration of the novel, after causing Finny’s fall off the tree, he starts to feel major guilt inside of him. Even though Finny does not know that Gene jounced the tree for most of the book, I think that made Gene feel even more guilty. In the end, Gene ends up not only losing his struggle, but also losing his best friend. Gene realizes that all along, he thought Finny was the enemy, but if he had acted like Finny, like he always compared himself to be, he would have realized that the antagonists are maybe not always the enemy after all. So after Finny passed, Gene never killed anyone during World War II, and never saw anyone as an enemy, just as Finny would have

In his novel A Separate Peace, John Knowles demonstrates that, to achieve adulthood, one must lose innocence and acknowledge this loss.

Crafted by author John Knowles in the late 1950’s, A Separate Peace is a heart-wrenching Bildungsroman narrated by a pensive Gene Forrester as he reflects upon trials and tribulations at his alma-mater, the Devon Boarding School. In an attempt to process the tragic loss of his best friend and coping with his own responsibility in his friend’s death, Gene returns to the campus to confront his progressive loss of Finny in both his plummet from the tree by the river to his tumble down the marble staircase. At a glance, Finny and Gene’s relationship appears to be a story of tragedy as Gene must forever carry the loss of his very best friend, but as the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Gene and Finny’s relationship before Finny’s accident was far from being black-and-white. Diving deeper into the text, Gene reveals his true feelings about Finny that fluctuate from Finny being an object of obsession to being a source of resentment. As the story is told from Gene’s point of view, the reader is submerged into the realm of Gene’s odd fascinations with Finny and the manifestations of his feelings of hatred and idolization as he acts out in odd ways, such as mimicking Finny’s facial expressions and clothing and developing conspiracy theories in which Finny is planning Gene’s academic downfall. Gradually, the picture painted of the teenage Gene Forrester of A Separate Peace becomes more and more distorted as Gene’s sanity is called into question. His

However, Phineas contradicts Gene’s idea and clarifies Gene’s conflict as a misinterpretation when he states, “I didn’t know you needed to study… I just thought it came to you” (58). Phineas reveals his own perception in juxtaposition to Gene’s. Phineas’ sincere statement puts to rest Gene’s postulation about the intentions of Phineas.

In a way it appears as though while the characters throughout the novel refuse to accept the reality of the approaching war, Gene’s mind, growing more consumed by the day with a hostile need to be on top is turning something very small into a war in itself. Gene, once a gentle boy who followed all rules was becoming a type of warrior, fighting not only his jealousy, but his believed to be best friend. Gene is prepared to take any action to come out on top, and this is brought out by his jealousy of Finny’s success, and his belief that this jealousy is mutual. This war and foreshadowing of a ‘deadly rivalry’ is later revealed when Gene overcome by this jealousy takes action against Phineas. “I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and the he tumbled side-ways... and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud” (Knowles 60). Jealousy has taken over Gene, leading him to jounce the tree limb him and Finny were meant to jump off of, causing Finny to fall. Gene expressed multiple times throughout the novel that he wished for Phineas to fail just once, or to get in trouble.

In the middle of the novel, Knowles begins to show how Gene adapts to Phineas’s identity, just as it was foreshadowed in the beginning of the

From juvenility to maturity, A Separate Peace combines classic American Literature with a thoughtful plot-line that is developed to affect the readers’ mind and heart. The author, John Knowles of Fairmont, West Virginia, had one clear purpose for writing this book. This purpose was to show the disastrous mental and physical problems which arise as the result of war, specifically the repercussions they have on the home front. A good lesson to learn from this book is that even a war three-thousand miles away can have just as much ramification as a war three miles away. This novel shows the transition of Gene Forrester and his friends from boyhood to manhood during a difficult time in American history, while demonstrating that

In the first few chapters of A Separate Peace alone, Gene Forrester is John Knowles. In the first chapter, Gene is a grown man fifteen years in the future. He describes Devon School in the summer session in 1942. Devon School is rarely mentioned in the book. In A Separate Peace: The War Within the chronology states that in 1943, a year older than the book, he too went to a summer session at Exeter Academy (Bryant, xi).

The novel begins with old Gene remembering what happened at Devon fifteen years ago. Gene and Finny go to Devon School during WWII. Even though they are friends , they are very different. Finny is the top well-rounded athlete who can get talk his way out of anything, while Gene is the studious, shy kid. Finny comes off as a jerk and thinks he has to be good at everything. I do not quite understand Finny and Gene’s friendship. Finny creates a secret society and in order to be in it you must jump from a tree limb. I also believe that Finny and Gene are both afraid of denial, change in time passing. The way they see things and the way Gene presents himself isn’t reality. Also, Gene has trouble finding his inner peace throughout the novel.

Towards the end of the book, Gene concludes to himself and says, “During the time I was with him, Phineas created an atmosphere in which I continued now to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal reservations, letting its rocklike facts

One must adapt to their surroundings by using the skills and knowledge acquired from their experiences because life is survival of the fittest. As an individual ages, they gain skills and wisdom through their experiences, accomplishments, mistakes, and observant of their surroundings. Many people, including Phineas, believe that “ignorance is bliss”. In John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, the author characterizes Phineas as a charismatic, yet naive individual. In this novel, Phineas forces himself to stay ignorant and to remain innocent and carefree. He denies Gene’s involvement in his accident and refuses to acknowledge Gene’s confession. He also goes through stages of denial and anger before accepting Gene’s responsibility. In the end, Phineas

“You are even in enmity. You are both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone… I felt better. (Knowles 4). He tries to convince himself that Finny felt the same exact way. All along Gene is the only one having feelings like that. His conflict of envious and imitation towards himself affected his relationship as well. Since Gene has now acknowledged his feelings toward Finny, his actions will cause a lot of confusion. The level of jealousy and envy Gene has towards Finny increases, he starts to put the blame on Finny for incidents such as him almost falling. “I wouldn’t have been on that darn limb except for him… and so I lost my balance, if he hadn’t been there,” (Knowles 60). He does not want to see Finny become even more successful. He becomes so resentful of Phineas athletic skills he causes his friends injury to the leg. “Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb,” (Knowles 60). Gene describes the events that took place right before the fall. Now he seeks to amend with his friend even after the act was intentionally done to harm Phineas. After the tragic accidents spiraling after one another, Gene finds his

A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a story about a man named Gene who goes back to his old school to remember how his days in that school. In the story we discover that when he was kid, he was jealous of his best friend named Phineas. Phineas was an athletic, and a good person. This made Gene to envy Phineas. One day while Phineas was getting ready to jump from a tree near to a lake, Gene decided to shake the branch where Phineas was.