Influences of John Knowles
What is an author’s muse? A muse can be influences from historical events, life events, or ideals. A Separate Peace written by John Knowles is a book written from his experiences and current events. He took these experiences and transferred them to his novel. Today many people appreciate his novel and its influences. John Knowles’ boarding school at Exeter, his life and experiences during World War II, and the characters’ guilt influenced his great work, A Separate Peace.
Phillips Exeter Academy, the school John Knowles attended, played a major role in the development of the story. John Knowles wrote A Separate Peace fifteen years after his graduation. In the beginning of A Separate Peace, Gene returns to visit the school fifteen years later (Knowles. “A Special Time, A Special School” 1). Knowles’ graduation time influenced the amount of years Gene visited the school after graduating. Like the Devon School, Exeter is located in New England, where most of the plot took place (1).
Various characters were modeled after people that attended the academy. Phineas “Finny” was modeled after Bob Tait. He died on the operating table because bone marrow escaped from his bones, which is a major part of Finny’s character (Knowles. “Reflections of John Knowles about his Novel” 2). George Carhart is the school clergyman in the novel; however, at Exeter, he works in the English department. John Knowles gave this English teacher an important role in the novel because he liked the sound of his name (1). Brinker Hadley, one of the characters in the novel, was modeled after Gore Vidal (1). According to John Knowles, Gore was “a very unusual and thriving person.” (1). Vidal’s personality formed the persona of Bri...
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A Separate Peace is a coming of age novel in which Gene, the main character, revisits his high school and his traumatic teen years. When Gene was a teen-ager his best friend and roommate Phineas (Finny) was the star athlete of the school.
In John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, characters Gene and Phineas begin their journeys to adulthood in a war-torn environment. The dynamic formed between a world full of struggle and the crucial age of development in high school proves to be an excellent setting to examine the abilities of both Gene and Phineas to “come of age.” Being a Bildungsroman, the theme of coping with war and death is highlighted via the imagery that surrounds both Gene’s epiphany moment at the marble stairs, and its introduction at the beginning of the novel. Additionally, Knowles employs a flashback to set a nostalgic and somewhat reflective mood, which further extends this meaning. In Knowles’ “coming of age” novel A Separate Peace, the use of imagery surrounding the marble stairs, and a reminiscent flashback aid Gene discovers that war and death can never be understood.
In John Knowles' novel A Separate Peace, the theme of loss of innocence is skillfully developed through setting, character, and symbols. This story simply details a young man's entering the adult world as all children do. Everyone suffers loss of innocence.
In A Separate Peace, author John Knowles uses the element of water to portray hidden meanings throughout the story. Although the weather is part of the setting, the rain, snow, and fog also reveal a character’s inner thoughts and what they are experiencing. Sometimes, when characters are showing effusive emotion, authors let “a character to cleansed, symbolically,” (Foster 77) by letting him walk through the rain. This causes them to be “less angry, less confused, and more repentant” (Foster 77). In A Separate Peace, Gene revisits his old school, Devon, after his time in the war. He ventures to the tree in which he pushed off his best friend, and rain begins to pour. Being cleansed in the rain, he realizes, “nothing endures, not a tree, not
Kagan, Donald. On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace. New York: Anchor Books Doubleday, 1995.
22 Brinkley, Alan An Uneasy Peace 1988-, Vol. 10 of 20th Century America, 10 vols. (New York: Grolier 1995):22
After war Daru had requested to be transferred to a small town, where the silence of the town echoes in the schoolhouse; and it was hard on him. Now that he has company the same silence still muter the house. He thought about war and how he fought next to other men, whom he got to know and to love. The presence of the Arab imposes on Daru a feeling of brotherhood that he knew very well, and that he didn’t want to share. Men that fought together, or share rooms, or were prisoners or soldiers grow a peculiar alliance. However, Daru tries not to think about it, such feelings aren’t good for him. Daru wishes the Arab runs away because he feels as much of a prisoner as the
In John Knowle’s A Separate Peace, symbols are used to develop and advance the themes of the novel. One theme is the lack of awareness of the real world among the students who attend the Devon Academy. The war is a symbol of the "real world", from which the boys exclude themselves. It is as if the boys are in their own little world, or bubbles secluded from the outside world and everyone else.
" Bloom's Literature. Ed. Facts on File, Inc. N.p.:
...ely with one another and lived in peace as partners, the ease of human transgression permits no romanticized view of this Agolden age.@ Finally B and this is a much more fragmentary conceptualization B the story refuses its hearers the luxury of demonizing, suppressing or repressing violence. Violence is not something that others do to us, but something we inflict upon others. The story consequently demands that we confront and internalize deeply the consequences of violence, and in this alone offers a profoundly important model of response.
Powers, Peter Kerry. "The Treacherous Body: Isolation, Confession, and Community in James Baldwin." 787-813. Duke University Press, 2005. Academic Search Premier.
"Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my escape from it" ( Knowles 5). In this novel A Separate Peace, using these words, John Knowles reveals the fear that haunts the students at Devon and when they proceeded with all their training for the war they mature into adults.
Antle III, W. James. "Speak Now, Or Forever Hold Your Peace. (Cover Story)." American Spectator 45.6 (2012): 14. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
John Knowles writes a compelling realistic fiction about the lives of two teenage boys throughout the start of World War II in his novel A Separate Peace. Peter Yates the director of the movie plays the story out in a well organized theatrical manner. There are similarities and differences in these two works of art. However; there are also similarities.
Holsti, K. J. Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648-1989. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. Print.