Identity In John Knowles A Separate Peace

While the adolescent males conveyed valiant desires, they all remained fearful of the future. Finny was the one who possessed the ability to enliven his solemn peers. Rather than wallowing in his thoughts, Finny hosted the winter carnival. A social function of such magnitude kept the teenagers from focusing on the war, but rather on their several youthful possibilities. While enjoying himself at the carnival, Gene reflected, “It wasn't the cider which made me surpass myself, it was this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of 1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory, and separate peace” (9.128). Gene repeatedly implied “peace” at Devon School, however this was only acquired thanks to Finny helping peers mentally escape the war. Though Finny viewed his actions as a positive diversion, Gene’s paranoia began to obscure his judgment. Gene retained a deep-seated loathing for Finny, mainly due to jealously. After convincing himself that Finny was sabotaging his educational achievements, Gene shook the branch both boys were standing on. Finny plummeted downward and injured himself to the extent of never being able to participate in sporting events again. When analyzing his greatest fears involving Finny in chapter four, Gene stated, “He had never been jealous of me for a

The book, "A Separate Peace," by John Knowles can be interpreted more than one way. You can take it literally, or look into the symbolic meaning of the landmarks of the Devon school, including the two "fearful sites" Gene visited in the beginning. As stated in the book by Gene, everything in the time period revolved around the war. This includes the great symbolism used, so mainly the tree, the Devon River, and the Naguamsett River. The Devon and Naguamsett Rivers both run through the campus of Devon. They are exact opposites (pg. 40).

Oscar Wilde once determined that “most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” People tend to fall into this pattern when they allow themselves to have a temporary identity, willingly influenced by others. It may be due to one’s insecurities or desire to be accepted, yet regardless, people allow themselves to be controlled by others. A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, portrays how the protagonist, Gene, struggles with his own identity. Gene often finds himself succumbing to his best friend’s influence because he is insecure in his own identity. He demonstrates his personal war with himself through his continuously shifting mindset. Therefore, conflicting diction

In A Separate Peace Gene and Finny’s friendship has to tackle a lot of obstacles. Gene and Finny were never exactly on the same page when it came to their friendship. Each of them was always assuming about the other. One of the book’s messages is that friendships take work, and if the friendship is worth it, then you should put in the work. In A Separate Peace, there are prevalent themes of friendship, how friends can help or hurt one another, and the sacrifices made for loved ones.

This elucidation can be broken down even further; whether the good and evil is an internal conflict within Gene, or using both Gene and Finny as symbols of good and evil. Again, both can be accurate depending on the way the audience looks at it. For example, Gene’s feelings apropos Finny were always conflicting. Moreover, he knew Finny was a good friend, but was still incessantly emulous in his thoughts and actions. He subconsciously made Finny fall, exhibiting the immoral part of him, and he, full of contrition, still visited him in the hospital, representing the ethical side. Also, Finny can be depicted as symbolic virtue; consequently, Gene delineates vice. Furthermore, Finny shows successive forgiveness, selflessness, courage and, honesty. Gene conveys continual invidiousness, repentance, and hatefulness. The story shows how they dispute, but it’s very subtle, as if the fight between good and evil would be a nugatory argument rather than a war.

As one can see, this novel reveals the results of how envy and imitation affect Gene, his relationship with Finny,

Instead of joining Finny wholeheartedly and honestly speaking through feelings (about studying for exams, for example), Gene suppresses their mixed emotions and becomes the new experience of freedom in other conformity: It was decided to follow Finny's whims without exception or risk losing their friendship. This way of thinking "all or nothing" childlike in its simplicity, leads to Gene Finny to resent and ultimately causes the violent explosion that destroys a

As Knowles’ narrative progresses, Gene’s developing resentment of Finny’s seemingly abundant talent triggers an increasingly dark and misguided rivalry. After surmising his exemplary grades would even the score between the two boys, Gene commits himself academically. Consequently, he assigns blame to Finny for sabotaging his studies so

The search for identity has plagued the minds in the course of life. In A Separate Peace, Knowles explores the mind of a young boarding school student as he makes the desperate attempt to appoint himself to what he believes is a superior personality. Devon highschooler, Gene, urges himself to obtain the identity of his best friend, wanting to distance from himself from his own nature. In the view of Gene’s perspective, it is shown that the development of his new temperament drastically affects himself and his fellow classmates. Identity is constantly cultivated to publicize the impact that it creates when turning to obsession.

The book “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles has two teenage kids going through the Devon Boarding School. The book shows Finny and Gene’s unique traits. The setting of A Separate Peace reveals Gene to be envious, unathletic, and intelligent. Most of the story takes place in the 1940’s and 50’s at the Devon School.

“A Separate Peace” is more than just a book about war and stressful times. It is about maturation; in the case of Gene and Phineas, this couldn’t be truer. The two best friends who attend Devon Boarding School have to deal with a stressful time in their lives, growing up and having responsibilities, and the looming idea that draft age is not far. Throughout the book, the two go through a chain of events leading to loss of innocence, building up anger and stress, and eventually: accepting the reality of the situation. Their lives, dreams and ideals won’t be same afterwords.

A Separate Peace, a book written in 1959 by John Knowles recollects the young and damaging experiences of many boys during WWII at the Devon School.The reader goes through the tragic story of Finny, the internal conflict of Gene, and the unexpected changes in some of the boy. The war has taken a toll on the students of Devon one way or another but what if a student completely blocked out all of that out. Where his reality is that the war is the ultimate scam against the younger generation, a scam that’s been going on since the Roaring Twenties. Finny, rebellious self, always questions the status-quo but does always ignoring and dismissing the truth always a good choice? It may work for some things that you want to repress but ultimately, you

Finny is fully aware of the wretchedness of his best friend and the world around him throughout the course of the novel. His refusal to acknowledge the world around him causes him to create “his own world out of his imagination,” (Forbes 3). As a result, “denial has been replaced by acknowledgment of the truth,” in Finny’s mind (Rowe 4), and Finny finds himself incapable of accepting the war because “to accept the war is for Finny to accept a broken world,” actively denying the possibility of a cruel world because he does not want to accept the impending conclusion that Gene ruined his life by causing his fall (Ellis 317). Because Finny is unable to accept that his best friend maintains a certain jealousy and moral ugliness, he is killed by the subsequent mock trial Brinker and the other boys hold to force him to open his eyes. When he finally accepts the truth, he releases the rage that was held back by his denial and “asks Gene what else of his Gene plans to break,” showing that he too is capable of the same human anger that Gene was so familiar with (Adney 3). Moreover, this outburst serves as important insight into Finny’s character, showing that he was aware of Gene’s darkness and the darkness of the world throughout the novel, but was choosing to pretend that it did not exist. Therefore, when the reader realizes that Finny is no longer the innocent and godlike hero that Gene viewed him as, Finny’s raw humanity is exposed and the reader is forced to confront reality just like Finny was. Finny’s ungodliness makes the reader realize that every person is imperfect, even when seen through a lens of

A Separate Peace by John Knowles tells the story of a complicated friendship between two teenage boys who attend Devon Academy during World War II. The narrator, Gene Forrester, starts the story by visiting his old school fifteen years after he graduates and goes to various “fearful sites” of his past. Stopping at a tree, he begins to narrate the rest of the novel describing his time at Devon. In his narration, he tells the story of his friendship with Phineas “Finny” and how the war affected them. The words “a separate peace” can be extracted from multiple literal and symbolic interpretations of different dynamics of the novel.

A “separate peace” is referred to as the peace you must make with yourself, and the peace you must make deeper within. In the classic novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the title is meant to prove the point of the book. The point was that Gene had to find a separate peace within himself through all the chaos happening in the world around him. This includes Finny, the war, and the rest of his friends. Through all the fighting, accidents and hardships, the two friends must find their separate peace.