John Knowles a Separate Peace Essay

Emotions can drive people to act in ways they never imagined. The characters in John Knowles novel, A Separate Peace, constantly fall victim to their emotions and often make decisions based off of them. A Separate Peace takes place during World War 2 at an all-boys private boarding school in New Hampshire. The plot follows the life of Gene Forrester in his senior year at the school, and how he faces the competition of school and the war at the same time. In this novel, Gene constantly competes with

The setting of the novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, is set in New England at a all boys school during World War II. The year is 1942 at Devon School. At this time America is rationing supplies and has just started a draft for the war. People are scared and kids have to grow up way to fast. The novel conveys the life of Gene a teenage boy attending Devon. Gene Forrester is a fit 16 year old young man. Gene is 5ft 8 and ½ in as specified by Phineas. He is mentally strong and if he

People frequently betray others because of the evil in their hearts. In A Separate Peace, John Knowles uses the pureness of the rakish Finny to portray the savage or bad side of the vulpine Gene. He also uses it to prove that peace is exceedingly difficult to acquire until a person accepts the ignorance in their own heart. That means that acceptance is the key to finding peace. Thus, Gene finds his peace when Finny forgives him and when Gene learns to forgive himself as well. Gene assumes that

Interpretations of A Separate Peace 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

A Separate Peace “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles, fictional. The war was slowly approaching, and life is changing at Devon School. Life at Devon School is dominated when war approaches because people start to enlist, the activities they do relate to war, and people express their beliefs/feelings about the war. Some people decided to dedicate their time towards preparing for the war while others didn’t. Not everyone felt the same about the approach of the war. Enlisting was only the first attempt

A Separate Peace takes place in the middle of World War II, at a boarding school in New England for boys. The author John Knowles uses this setting and its characters as a form of comparison to the war going on half a world away, both physically and metaphorically. At the school, John Knowles stages this metaphorical war inside the mind of the protagonist, Gene Forrester, who engages in a different war throughout the course of the novel. When the novel concludes Gene says “My war ended before I even

Aside from the war going on, John Knowles was writing about a different peace. At Devon high school, the students are finding their own peace. There is many interpretations for the title “A Separate Peace”. In the novel “A Separate Peace”, John Knowles interpreted the title as a war you go through in your lifetime, an escape from reality, or lost of identity. According to Gene, everyone has gone through war with an enemy to reach their separate peace. Gene’s enemy was himself. He overcame his enemy

your story. You don't explain your story to a reader. You make it happen in the reader’s mind” (Mabe 1). Those words were said by the late John Knowles in 1987, when he began to teach creative writing in South Florida. He lived up to his words by making sure that his reader was thoroughly entertained as they examined his best known novel, A Separate Peace, a coming of age story which follows two teenage boys and their friendship during World War II. As the plot begins to firmly establish itself

John Knowles’ captivating novel A Separate Peace explores the eventful life of two adolescent students in New Hampshire during a time of complication and chaos in World War II. Finny, an astonishingly athletic and adventurous boy, gets himself and his best friend Gene Forrester into a bit of mischief during their experiences in school, where he tends to do the opposite of what others expect him to do, making him a truly unique character. Despite living in a time of World War II, the evils of the

In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene Forrester, the main character, struggles with copious moral dilemmas while living at a boarding school, named Devon. The author portrays Gene as an introverted intellectual, who is shielded from the reality of World War II. As a result of this “separate peace”, he mainly struggles with his self-integrity and, consequently, feels much envy and jealousy towards his classmates at Devon. By examining Gene’s antagonistic behavior towards his peers, it is evident