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Essays on art of war
What is the effect of war on society
War and its impact on society
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Throughout human history, war has stood as a universal reaction to various conflicts between diverse peoples. War can embed itself into a culture over generations of fighting. So much so that there exists cultures that base themselves around the idea of war, creating hostile and bellicose peoples. At times, war may not even have grounds, but the aggressive nature of the people often cause it to proceed without justification. In A Separate Peace, wars such as these are seen between the characters and within the characters of Gene and Phineas. These wars can be thought of as figments of imagination, founded on irrational assumptions, fears of the unknown, and nonexistent threats. Regardless of their origin, the enemy is always daunting. John Knowles’ A Separate Peace reveals Gene’s perceived war with Phineas and Phineas’ internal conflict with World War II to be intertwined with each other through Gene’s misunderstanding of Phineas and Phineas’ dependency on Gene to escape the realization of war itself.
Phineas is an individual who is unable to accept the war, and in retaliation to the war, attempts to avoid it altogether. Phineas describes to Gene that “there isn’t any war” and that the war is created by “fat old men” just to keep “people who were young… in their places” (Knowles 115). In this moment, Phineas explicitly denies that the war exists. His direct denial of the war’s existence suggests that he cannot cope with his fears about the war, and in his fear, takes steps to separate himself from the war through denial. Phineas possesses anti-war ideals that push him to take this stance. Gene unveils these ideals when he tries to explain to him that if he were to go to war, he would ask enemies “to field a baseball team again...
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...f the Butt Room in order to avoid conversation about the war. Phineas avoidance of the war is then compounded by Phineas’ emphasis on Gene’s sports, as they serve to distract Phineas from the war.
While Gene’s war with Phineas is driven by an ignorance of his perceived enemy, Phineas’ war with World War II is driven by an inability to come to terms with the reality of the war and an inability to define the enemy. Unfortunately, these wars become intertwined through Gene’s misconceptions about Phineas and Gene’s role as Phineas’ codependent. While World War II has tangible justification, the youth, lack of life experiences, weakness of character, and fear in Phineas and Gene act to drive their wars. Ultimately, their wars are caused “by something ignorant in the human heart” (201).
Works Cited
Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.
Friendship is a necessity throughout life whether it is during elementary school or during adulthood. Some friendships may last a while and some may last for a year; it depends on the strength of the bond and trust between the two people. In the novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles, the main characters, Gene and Finny, did not have a pure friendship because it was driven by envy and jealousy, they did not feel the same way towards each other and they did not accurately understand each other.
For starters, Alton was correct when he stated that Gene’s narratives were unreliable. Since the story was told from Gene’s point of view, we had no outside opinions of the characters (Alton). For example, the scene where Finny falls out of the tree is very confusing at points. Gene contradicts himself multiple times. When the accident first happened, he states that he did indeed jounce the limb, but in Leper’s mock-trial later in the book, he denies jouncing the limb many times. This is just one of the many examples of this happening throughout the book (Alton). Mengeling was also correct when he stated that there is not only a world war happening on the surface, but there is also a war happening between Gene and Finny. For starters, Gene is in a constant competition with Finny no matter what he does. He even states in his own words that Finny is “too good to be true” (Mengeling). He breaks the swimming record simply because he was challenged to do so. He never studied and somehow managed to get good grades throughout the year. Gene was constantly having to compete with that, even though he knew that he couldn’t. The war started off as a conflict between Finny and Gene, but throughout the book, subsided as Gene’s internal war took over. Gene realized that if he couldn’t beat Finny in anything, he would become Finny. He started to dress like Finny and copy his actions. Finny only encouraged
Analysis: This quote is based on the theme of envy. It is clear that Gene feels that Phineas can get away with anything. The reader can tell that Gene hate him because of this.
A persona is a mask shown to the outside world developed in relation to consciousness, to hide the darkest aspects of a psyche, known as a shadow, behind it. Shadows contrast personas by holding undesirable and unwanted memories and behaviors, but the dark side of an individual must be accepted for the individual to fully understand oneself. In the coming of age novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, narrator Gene Forrester returns to New Hampshire to visit Devon School, where he studied fifteen years ago just as World War II had begun to unfold. The narrative shifts back fifteen years ago to Gene’s days at Devon School with his best friend, Phineas, also known as Finny, as he recalls memorable events from his past. Gene’s persona and shadow
Power, the perception of superiority over another human, is the source of many conflicts between people. Feeling inferior causes people to act beyond their normal personality. John Knowles strongly demonstrates this point in his work, A Separate Peace. In the relationship between Finny and Gene, Gene sets himself up to be inferior in the balance of power which motivates him to act irrationally to take power back from Finny.
The American Library Association defines a challenge to a book as, “an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based on the objections of a person or group” (“About Banned). A Separate Peace by John Knowles was one of the many challenged books of its time; it was ranked sixty-seventh on the American Literature Association’s list of most challenged classic novels The book continues to be challenged all over the country and in 2013 it is ranked thirty-fifth on the summer of banned books list .(ALA). A Separate Peace chronicles the life of a boy named Gene Forrester, a student of the prestigious Devon School in New Hampshire. In Gene’s first year at Devon. He becomes close friends with his daredevil of a roommate Finny. Secretly Gene somewhat
The theme “rite of passage” was used in the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. This moving from innocence to adulthood was contained within three sets of interconnected symbols: summer and winter, the Devon and Naguamsett Rivers, and peace and war. These symbols served as a backdrop upon which the novel was developed. The loss if Gene Forrester’s innocence was examined through these motifs.
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion. It is harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) A Separate Peace (1959) written by John Knowles, expresses the true struggle to respect ones individuality. In 1942 at a private school in New Hampshire Gene Forrester became good friends with his roommate, Finny. He envies Finny for his great Athletic ability. In spite of the envy, Gene and Finny do everything together and one day for fun they decide to jump out of a tree into the river. After that they form the Super Suicide Society, the first time they jumped being their reason for formation. During one of their meetings they decide to jump off at the same time. When they get up on the limb Gene bounces it and Finny falls on the bank. He shatters the bones in his leg and will never again play sports. Nobody realizes that Gene deliberately made Finny lose his balance. Because of the accident Gene does not play sports either and continues being friends with Finny. One night, some of the other guys from Devon School woke Gene and Finny up in the middle of the night. They are suspicious of the "accident." They conduct a trial to blame Gene for what has happened to Finny. Eventually Finny gets upset in the midst of argument and runs out. He ends up tripping and falling down the stairs, and breaking his healed leg allover again. It was a cleaner break this time but they still have to set it. Gene confesses to Finny that he bounced him out of the tree. While setting the break there are complications and Finny dies. Gene learns that he is his own person and now that Finny is gone he can finally be content with himself. In the beginning Gene feels inferior to Finny.
In the beginning of the short story, the young boy is already imprinted with the ideas of war from his father. His father was a former soldier who “had fought against naked savages and followed the flag of his country..” (Bierce 41). The image of war that is imprinted on the young boy from his father is that of nobility and righteous that comes from war.
As one can see, in the book A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles, dives into the lives of teenagers growing up during the war. One of which, Gene, struggles to find his own identity and peace during this time. He had to overcome many obstacles, to get to his peace but he eventually did and went on to live a pretty decent life as a soldier. Thus, envy and imitation can be a tragic thing even if it is just among
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
This war involves a human side, including the admission of fear and scenes of domestic life, not in a sentimentalized version. This more complete and responsible depiction shows that there's not one single center to the war, just as there's not one single god for the Greeks.
War is the worst solution to solve a conflict between countries or parties. War involves massive killing without mercy, obliterating cultures without sympathy, and destroying a nation’s solidarity without regret. Most importantly, war can affect deeply on a person’s emotion toward love and its own characteristic. In the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main character, Jay Gatsby, known as The Great Gatsby, was fighting in the war for 5 years and when he returned his only love, Daisy, was married an upper class man, Tom Buchanan. Suffering from the pain of losing Daisy, Gatsby has changed and become a phony person. Also, the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, both characters Lieutenant Cross and Tim O’Brien are the witness of the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Cross was affected by his love emotion and he failed to take care of his man. Also, Tim O’Brien was scared by the consequence of going to the war and attempted to escape to Canada. Ultimately, the characters from both books have the experience of being in the war and their personalities were different before and after the war.
Of course he isn’t here. But it would be just as embarrassing in front of you and Mrs. Patch-Withers,”. This explains how Phineas is not serious and does not take things into consideration, especially when he joked around with the substitute headmaster on the topic of his trousers falling off. Another reason is on page 114 Phineas asks Gene if he has really taken in all of the war matters, but then tells Gene that there is no war actually happening. Gene then says that it is just the medicine he is taking that is making himself think like that. Phineas disagrees telling him that everyone is on a “medicine drug”. On page 115 in the book, the text says “The fat old men who don’t want us crowding them out of their jobs. They’ve made it all up. There isn’t any real food shortage, for instance. The men have all the best steaks delivered to their clubs now. You’ve noticed how they’ve been getting fatter lately, haven’t you?”. This means that Phineas has an imagnerary image or mindset that there are men who are making everyone delusional, and no war exists between the “United States of America, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan”. This also explains how Phineases can come up with childish assumptions about the war,
The older generation had an artificial illusion of what war is and although Paul's generation, the soldiers, loved their country, they were forced to distinguish reality from illusion. Because of this disti...