A Separate Peace Reflection Essay

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.

As Carl Jung once stated, “Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious”. To reach a peaceful reconciliation, one must learn to embrace two distinct elements of their personality, the "Persona" and "Shadow." Likewise, in the bildungsroman, A Separate Peace, author John Knowles depicts the common rivalry between young adolescents, and how they struggle to accept their identity and the relationship between their unconscious self. Gene, a Devon High student, becomes best friends with Finny and grows jealous of his ostensibly flawless friend, causing him to make a life-changing decision. His struggles to reach an inner balance between his “Persona” and “Shadow” lead to the ultimate death of Finny. Gene’s transformation involves the changes of his mask and “Shadow”—from guilt and jealousy to pride and tolerance—which results in the later acceptance of the light and dark parts of himself, allowing him to truly reach adulthood and a state of peace.

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.

“He pretended that if the secrets stayed inside him, with all the other secrets, he could fool the world and himself too”

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

History is said to repeat itself after great amounts of time, but could two major world events that happened just a mere three years from each other be so similar? A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, chronicles the story of two teenage boys, Finny and Gene, at a private school in New England during World War II. Their entire school life is centered around preparing for the war, but rebellious Finny has other ideas for himself and Gene. Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck involves two migrant workers during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression who are facing the struggles of dealing with Lennie’s disability. These two books may not seem similar in plot, but thematically they share several aspects. In both novels, it can be seen that tragic events cause certain characters to seek a safe place and satisfaction.

Taking place amid the chaos of WWII, the novel “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles reveals of another war taking place in Devon High School. Gene, the narrator, grows a hatred for his closest friend, Phineas, using jealousy as his motive. Clouded by anger, Gene decides to jounce the limb on a tree in which him and Phineas were standing on, causing Phineas to fall and shatter not only his leg, but his dreams of becoming an olympic swimmer as well. Gene perceives the competition between him and Phineas as a war, however, Phineas refuses to accept that a competition exists, let alone a war. So throughout the book, Gene and Phineas fight battles within themselves to find their inner peace, a peace separate from the war going on itself. Through Gene’s and Phineas’s personal struggles, John Knowles illustrates how a person may only find their inner peace when they detach from their contentious emotions and acquire acceptance of their fate.

In chapters six and seven of the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, The Devon River symbolizes the familiar; relaxing and playing with Gene in the summer, while the Naguamsett represents the unknown and undiscovered. As Gene recollects,

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.

A Separate Peace took place at an all boys military school during WWII. Every young man who was eighteen or older was eligible to be drafted into the military and fight for their country. The boys in the novel were enrolled in a military school to prepare them if they got drafted. That way, the boys would know how to protect others and themselves, giving America a better chance to win the war. In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, WWII is used to represent loss of innocence and internal wars.

The point of view of A Separate Peace is written in first person from the perspective of protagonist Gene Forrester. The passage reflects the first person point of view by showing the world to the reader from Gene’s eyes, opposed to an anonymous onlooker. Furthermore, the narrator uses I, me and mine pronouns.

Historical events can play an important role in a person's life.  In A Separate Peace, the whole atmosphere at the Devon School changed as World War II progressed.  The boys either eagerly awaited the draft, enlisted in the area of war they wanted, or did not want to go at all.  The students at the school created new activities for enjoyment since the customary past times could not be played due to a lack of materials.  When a friend "returns" from the war, the boys at Devon got a real sense of what the war was like.  The boys learned that going to war was not all fun and games like they had anticipated.  The influence World War II had on the characters in A

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.

The book A Separate Peace by John Knowles tackles a variety of complex ideas and realities of this harsh world. The main story line built around Gene a young boy in a boarding school during the time of World War II thats where the harsh realties come in. OnA Separate Peace the main theme in this book is the growth of Gene and the identity he builds for and around himself with his peers and the authority figures he interacts with. Through out the novel you can see Gene’s envy and jealously for his “best friend” Phinias and how the envy manifests itself into creating his identity in solely being Phinias’s best friend because Gene himself can not be Phinias.

The magpie raised her head and smiled wryly, holding in her beak a pair of small shoes.