A Separate Peace Essay Chapter 1

Betrayal, one of the most horrible things you could do to anyone your family, a friend anyone. To me it’s one of my all time most hated things a person could do and it’s almost unforgivable. In this book A Separate Peace by John Knowles two boys Phineas and Gene who are best friends at a boarding school in New Hampshire experience some of the worst kinds of Betrayal you could think of. Gene commits a very bad betrayal when he jousts the tree limb they are both standing on ending up with Finny falling and badly breaking his leg. This was no accident because Gene can’t stand the guilt.

He thought it was the Landlady and so he tried to fight his way out and sure enough he did. When he turned around, he noticed it was a strange man who looked very familiar. “Who are you and what are you doing?” Mr. Weaver questioned, still trembling. “Thank you so much how can we ever repay you?!” the strange man said with another man peeking out behind him. “What are you talking about?” Mr.Weaver asked. “You have lifted the curse!” the men exclaimed. “The curse?” “Yes, the curse. You see… we were once guests here like you and the Landlady had poisoned us with a curse so we would stay here forever with her, but thanks to you, she’s dead and the curse has lifted! There has been no guests here until you.” They said. Mr.Weaver then spoke. “Whoah whoah, this is too crazy to be true. You’re saying I lifted a curse?” “Yeah pretty much.” “Well, I’ve got to head home now, this has been one heck of a week, so bye.” Billy just ended the conversation rubbing his read very confused wondering what just happened. The next thing you know, Billy Weaver is home from Bath finishing his life back at home in England telling everyone about his

1. Who is the main character in each book? What qualities does the character have that you relate to or admire? Why?

Chapter four starts with the gray dawn and closes with a gray dusk. Also, it begins with Gene describing Finny coming to life as Lazarus and ends with the tragic fall that destroys his life. Finny wakes that morning with characteristic action, proposing a quick swim. But of couse Gene declines because he is thinking about his limits and rules. When he looked at the sun, he knew it was about 6:30, and all he could do was worry about his trigonometry test that would be at 10:00. For Gene, the meaning of the morning emerges not from the beauty of the dawn the beautiful beach, but from his worries and disappointments. Finny has lost their money, and they must now bicycle back to Devon without breakfast and arrive just in time for Gene to fail his

Life can be viewed as a battle field, a constant fight between good and evil. In Leif Enger's Peace Like a River, this scenario was well depicted. In the novel, there was a constant fight taking place between the good and evil characters, and though based around family, love, and brotherhood, the novel mainly focused on the conflict between these characters.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is known as a mental illness that is suffered commonly by many soldiers after the traumatizing events of war. Within the troubling illness, not only does it affect the mindset of the person dealing with the disorder, it also affects the family and friends of the person suffering. In the book “A Separate Peace” written by John Knowles, a character known as Elwin Lepellier suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conclusion that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide” (Emerson 370). John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, perfectly shows the results of envy and imitation at a boys’ preparatory school, Devon, in 1943. The novel’s narrator and protagonist, Gene Forester, tells his story as a flashback of his days at the Devon School. He is first known for his academic skills and following of the rules, but later allows his insecurities and jealously drive him to make transgressions that will follow him for the rest of his life. A Separate Peace perfectly shows the results of how envy and imitation affect Gene, his relationship with Finny, and Gene’s achievement of peace.

Peace is very complex. It could happen when your young, or when your older and more experienced. Peace can come from bright times or dark time, such as death. In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles Gene finds peace in a very odd way. He has a quite “separate peace” from everyone else. Staring off as one piece, braking off into a separate piece, and finally finding a separate peace, Gene discovers he is himself, and not Finny.

n chapter seven of John Knowles’ novel, A Separate Peace, Gene is adjusting to school without Finny by his side. His personality changed once he had to face school alone. Gene might not have realized it but Finny had a huge effect on his overall mood. Finny has a very upbeat personality that rubs off on the other students.

What do you consider a good friend? Is it a person who always looks for your best interest, someone who wants to see you succeed, or how about someone who helps you to reach your goals in life? In the book A Separate Peace written by John Knowles, Gene and Finny appear to be friends. As the story follows them going through another school year, the characters show traits and actions that reveal unhealthy characteristics of a good friend: jealousy, mistrusting, and distracting. This negatively affects their relationship. Gene is clearly better off without Finny in his life.

"Your surroundings may change but your essence and your personality pretty much stay the same" (Dewan). The setting of the novel A Separate Peace is at an all boys school located in New Hampshire. The characters and plot are finely woven into the fabric of this institution. However, would events in this novel turn out differently if the story was set in a public high school, with a diverse environment? The characters and plot of A Separate Peace are not solely driven by their surroundings because the boys would still break the rules, Gene would have internal conflicts, and the war would affect the students.

Literary allegories correlate an author’s body of work to a greater known archetype, usually in pursuit of connecting certain ethics to the reader. A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, is an admirable example of this approach. Knowles applies tales from the biblical book of Genesis into his narrative of two friends attending an elite preparatory school. More specifically, the stories of Cain and Abel, plus Adam and Eve, are in reference. The lessons and morals that are being displayed within these stories are present alongside situational elements undergone by the main characters, Gene and Finny.

A shy, introverted, and intellectual young man must understand the values of friendship in order to overcome the threat of war and chaos that is happening around him and within him. A novel written by the author John Knowles, tells the story of Gene Forrester, whose envious personality and hasty decisions can inevitably ruin lives. In A Separate Peace, Gene, turned against his best friend must resolve his inner identity crisis and jealousy towards a friend while understanding that his actions have consequences and affect those closest to him.

The Just war theory maintains that war may be justified if fought only in certain circumstances, and only if certain restrictions are applied to the way in which war is fought. The theory that was first propounded by St Augustine of Hippo and St Ambrose of Milan ( 4th and 5th centuries AD) attempts to clarify two fundamental questions: ‘when is it right to fight?’ and ‘How should war be fought?’. Whereas Pacifists are people mainly Christians who reject the use of violence and the deliberate killing of civilians but claims that peace is intrinsically good and ought to be upheld either as a duty and that war can never be justifiable. However, Realists agree that, due to the

Charlie and Tommo are the main characters of the novel Private Peaceful, written by Michael Morpurgo. The boys head off in search of their “great adventure,” spending time training in the Salisbury Plains, England and in Etaples, France. Life in the training camps was a complete new experience from their normal day to day life in rural England. The training camps are very strict, they are run by Sergeant Hanley. Everything in the training camps was in lines, straight and organised. We see this when Tommo explains that “we lived every moment of every day together, and usually in lines. We lined up together for shaves, for food, for inspections. Even when we dug trenches, they had to be in lines, straight trenches with straight edges.” Life