Book Review Of A Separate Peace By John Knowles

The boys at the Devon school, in the novel A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, are World War II influenced by making them mature and grow up more quickly than they would have had there not been a war. The war makes some boys stronger and more ready for whatever life would bring, while in others it disables them to the point that they cannot handle the demands of life. This novel shows a “coming-of age” story, especially with three boys. Gene starts out as a naïve and sensitive person but matures into a person more knowledgeable and capable of handling the challenges of life through his crisis experiences with of course, Phineas, Leper and, Brinker.

However , Gene emulates Phineas by joining him for tree climbing and jumping into the river. Forester notes, “What was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this? Was he getting some kind of hold over me?”(Knowles 5). Knowles emphasizes the crisis on Genes mind which leads to him becoming more envious and

Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affect him in many ways. Gene begins to lose his identity and start conforming to Finny. According to Knowles, “If I was head of the class and won that prize then we would be even…” (27). This quote explains how Gene follows finny by trying to be head of the class with him. Gene gets jealous of Finny being head of the class, so he tells him if he was head they would be even. When Finny introduce jumping off the tree to Gene at first he didn’t want to do it, but he wanted to be like Finny so he did it. In Knowles words, “what was I doing up here anyway? Why did I let Finny talk me into stupid things like this? Was he getting some kind of hold over me? (5).

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

Over the summer session, Gene becomes close friends with Finny, an adventurous and amazingly trusting person. Gene, on the other hand, is a person who is more self-centered and doesn’t believe in Finny’s remarkable lack of hatred that makes him so unique. He believes that Finny is jealous of his academic prowess just like he is jealous of Finny’s superior athletic ability. Soon Gene realizes that his jealousy has blinded him to Finny’s authentic benevolence. Together they go on many adventures, and one day Finny and Gene decide to climb up a tree and jump into the river. Finny is balancing on a branch, ready to jump, when Gene accidently bounces the branch, causing Finny to fall. Finny broke his leg and was told that he would never be able to play sports again. Gene feels guilty about his role in the incident and tries to convince Finny that it was his fault. Finny laughs it off and doesn’t blame Gene for his role in the incident, showing more of his amiable personality. The summer session then ends, and both the boys go back to their homes. Gene visits Finny’s home, and he tells Finny that he bounced the branch on purpose. Finny doesn’t believe him and so Gene goes back to school. Brinker Hadley, a serious and responsible class politician, asks Gene if he wants to join the army with him. Gene agrees, but Finny’s return to the school causes his and Brinker’s idea to come to nothing.

To begin, Gene Forrester, an intelligent boy, and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, face mental and physical changes in their lives due to the looming war. Gene and Finny are pals and roommates, but once the root of jealousy springs in Gene’s heart, he begins to believe that Finny is out to sabotage his grades. Therefore, Gene, in a moment of blindness, pushes Finny out of a tree shattering his leg and leaving him injured for life. For Gene, World War II is a backdrop for the guilt he faces over Finny’s

“I wanted to see Phineas, and only Phineas. With him there was no conflict except between athletes… This was the only conflict he had ever believed in.” (page 152) When Gene returns from Leper’s house, all he wants to do is see Finny. Gene says that Finny never believed in any conflict, which alludes to when Gene admitted to making him fall out of the tree, and Finny refusing to believe him. Gene wants to forget about what happened, as the event is fresh in his mind after coming back from Leper’s. He still subconsciously trusts Finny to not bring up the subject of what happened at the tree.

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

Hearing Phineas fall after the trial led Gene to become hysteric. He abandons all rational thought, and ends up laughing in a deranged manner under Finny’s window while imagining people talking. All of the different emotions finally become too much, and Gene cannot handle it anymore.

A Separate Peace is a nonfiction, literary piece of art written by John Knowles that tells the story of a transformation within a boy named Gene Forrester.

In the novel, “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles, the seasons develop actions and characters in the story. The story takes place at an all-boys boarding school in New Hampshire during World War II based off of the author’s previous experiences at a boarding school. The two main characters, Finny and Gene, experience character development alongside different seasons. In written works, seasons are commonly used to symbolically represent a change in the character’s personalities. The nature or setting of the story is used to specifically evolve Finny and Gene in seasons such as the summer, autumn, and winter. Each season change also generates an entirely different mood.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a fictional novel. The story is about 2 boys that went to Devon high school during World War 2. The war gradually encroaches upon and finally dominates life at Devon and it is shown through the views, attitudes, and beliefs of Gene and Finny.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles takes place in 1942 New Hampshire at Devon Boarding School. The novel discusses the issues that occur to students at Devon being prepared to leave to the war. Gene who is the protaginist of the story is often contradicting himself and is in a battle with himself. Gene’s best friend Finny is often going through trouble that Gene blames on himself. The idea that gene kills his own innocence is not likely considering his lack of worldly experience, his tendency to martyrdom and the impact that the war has on his charecter.

He creates a false perception of Phineas trying to ruin him to not feel like he is below him. Gene’s envy of Phineas affects him negatively, but his imitation, while still negative to him mentally, manages to affect him positively as he learns about himself in the end. “He recognizes his attraction to deadly things and more significantly, he writes a narrative about his relationship with Phineas revealing the flaws of his own character” (Aldon 2). When Gene hung around Phineas, he started to imitate his actions as he accompanied him to dangerous and illegal activities. As a result, he realized he is a thrill seeker and his personality began to build around Phineas.

John Knowles’s novel A Separate Peace follows a group of private school students through a turning point in their lives. After previously being secluded from the chaos around the world, their sudden involvement in Finny’s injury and the war effort force them to adopt different perspectives. The more they learn from these new viewpoints, the more they mature and understand the world as it really is. A Separate Peace shows that, in order to grow as a person, it is necessary to view life from different perspectives.