A Separate Peace By John Knowles

himself. Gene explains, “ I spent as much time as I could alone in our room, trying to

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

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that intimidation is suicide…” (Emerson 370). A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, takes place at Devon, a preparatory school in New Hampshire, during the 1940’s. Gene Forrester is a student at Devon and drives much of the story’s plot through his intimidation of his best friend Finny. A Separate Peace not only shows how Gene’s envy and intimidation of Finny affected him and his friendship with Finny, but it also shows Gene’s failure in achieving true peace.

John Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace recounts the turbulent life led by a young American teenager during the chaos and uncertainty of World War II. While attending Devon School, Gene Forrester, a brainy yet insecure teen, finds adventure and companionship with his well-rounded friend and roommate Finny. Despite Gene’s own strength as an academic, his envy for the ever-charming and athletic Finny creates a competitive rift and one-sided rivalry that proves unhealthy and dangerous to their relationship.

Throughout human history, war has stood as a universal reaction to various conflicts between diverse peoples. War can embed itself into a culture over generations of fighting. So much so that there exists cultures that base themselves around the idea of war, creating hostile and bellicose peoples. At times, war may not even have grounds, but the aggressive nature of the people often cause it to proceed without justification. In A Separate Peace, wars such as these are seen between the characters and within the characters of Gene and Phineas. These wars can be thought of as figments of imagination, founded on irrational assumptions, fears of the unknown, and nonexistent threats. Regardless of their origin, the enemy is always daunting.

A Separate Peace, a coming-of-age novel by John Knowles, demonstrates the consequences of conflict in personal relationships, as well as within oneself. In the novel, Gene Forrester, the protagonist, battles with internal conflict involving his identity and emotions towards his best friend, Phineas, also known as Finny. Gene develops envy towards his best friend and believes in an enmity between them that does not exist, which leads to external conflict between Gene and Finny. Gene, throughout the novel, creates the most conflict that separates him from Finny, ultimately leading to Finny’s demise. Examples of these conflicts, both real and imaginary, have been provided by Gene’s thoughts as the narrator. One of the first signs of internal conflict involving Finny can be recognized when Finny calls Gene his best friend, to which Gene does not respond. As Gene states, “Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling deeper than thought, which contains the truth”(Knowles 48). The internal conflict has already begun, onsetting many more conflicts to come. This quote means that Gene does not consider Finny his best friend due to Gene’s latent jealousy towards Finny’s charm and wit. An example of external conflict as a result of Gene’s internal conflict can be derived from the scene where Gene realizes that Finny had no ill will towards him and that all enmity between them had been a figure of Gene’s imagination. Gene had thought Finny was making an effort to distract him from his

Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher and public intellectual once said that, “everybody tends to merge his identity with other people… It’s called being mass man”. Mass man is what one would describe as a person lacking any individuality or uniqueness. This relates to John Knowles’s novel, A Separate Peace through the idea of Gene’s struggle with identity throughout the stories that he tells due to his own lack of individuality. In the novel, Gene Forrester is a student at the Devon School, a boarding school in New Hampshire. At Devon, Gene struggles with the concept of who he is, and who he wants to be. This struggle is greatly influenced by Gene’s best friend, Phineas, “Finny”. Gene looks up to Finny as both a friend and a role

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).

As Stephen King once said, “Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.” John Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace which is also a movie by Peter Yates, both have the same theme and plot, however, there are minor adaptations that are made to the movie which fail to capture the nature of the characters. A Separate Peace is set at a boys’ boarding school in New Hampshire during World War II. It is the story of Gene Forrester, and his confused feelings of admiration and envy that he holds for his roommate and best friend, Phineas. The movie does not get into deeper issues, which makes the movie less captivating than the novel. The movie does not provide a great insight of the character’s thoughts and it excludes a number of events which occur in the novel.

The coming-of-age novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, is based on the author’s high school years at his prestigious school, the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. The novel is set in the fictional Devon School during World War II. It explores the prep school idyll of two adolescent boys, Gene and Phineas. The novel's main character, Gene Forrester, who is also the narrator of the story, was based on the young Knowles himself, while Finny’s character was modeled after another student from Exeter, David Hackett. In A Separate Peace, John Knowles, uses Phineas’ masculinity to determine the relationship between him and Gene, and to learn the limitations of his masculinity.

Introduction: Almost every human being in the worlfd matures, the person can mature physically and/or mentally. In A seperate peace, by John KNowles, an ongoing that comes up several times during this novel is is maturation or maturity. Many characters in this melodramatic novel, if not all of them end up maturing in this novel. World war 2 made some characters like Leper Lepellier mature more then if there hadnt been a war.Also as the story progresses, so does the characters ' maturity.

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

Gene Forrester, the protagonist of John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, is the character who first institutes the continuous theme of competition. Gene’s conflicting emotions of veneration and resentment toward Phineas, who is often regarded as the star athlete of the Devon School, are regularly emphasized throughout the novel and create an interesting conflict between the two characters. The theme first surfaces in the first few chapters of A Separate Peace, specifically the end of chapter 3, where Finny is fed up with the school’s swimming pool and suggests that Gene and him take a “forbidden” trip to the beach. Although Gene feels that going there risks expulsion, wastes his study time, and involves just the kind of laborious bike ride he hated, he complies with no argument (46).

War is a theme that appears in the backdrop throughout the entire novel. Whether it’s an international war or a war fought by oneself, war is still evident throughout the novel. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the main characters Gene and Phineas are undergoing two wars. One war being World War 2 and another being an internal conflict that the both of them have to face. Throughout the novel, Gene aspires to be like Phineas and he has done things that has changed the both of their lives forever.

Friendship means to value friends with a sense of mutual respect, trust, and support to each other. Two people could call themselves truly great friends with actually knowing what friendship means. In A Separate Peace Gene starts out by going back to Devon school, where he had gone before he went into the war. The story later starts back in a summer session and the story introduces Phineas. Throughout the entire story, the relationship between Finny and Gene never stays the same and goes through several predominant traits.