Effects of the War on the Students of Devon "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. A Separate Peace shares the lives of students at Devon that are forced into an unknown world of fear, problems, and uncertainty as they head off to World War II in training to fight and represent their country where they will find or lose themselves and make important decisions that will impact their future. The students at Devon are put into adulthood at an early age, having to fight and make their country proud, but they are left feeling pressure for a war they do not start. The students enter a world of unexpectedness and dread where they are forced into adulthood through war, and are exposed to self sacrifice, physical awareness, and patriotism. Self-sacrifice is a major value that effects the students of Devon as they decide to enlist and sacrifice their luxuries. The students are faced with the unfamiliar pressures of the adult world where they must sacrifice themselves for the good of their country. For example, when a recruiter comes to Devon to encourage the students to join the ski-troops in the army, Leper Lepellier decides to enlist because even though he fears the war he knows he is pressured to make a decision ( where to enlist ) and this is one war job, he can execute. Leper , a loner, has finally found wh... ... middle of paper ... ... and in doing so represent their country even more. Trying to be patriotic becomes hard for Brinker when his father wants him not to embarrass himself and do more for the country because Brinker feels that his father doesn?t understand that he is afraid to go to war. Brinker says", He and his crowd are responsible for it and we're going to fight it " (190). This quote shows how agitated Brinker is with his father for trying to tell him to accomplish more in a dangerous war, that Brinker wants nothing to do with, that can possibly lead to his own death. To sum up, patriotism is a necessity in going to war and representing the country because it shows feelings from the fighter to his or her country. To sum up, the boys at Devon have endured a lot as teenagers. They are faced with pressures and values that cause them to develop into adults, at an early age.
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 is discovering that war and death can never be understood.
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.
The novel A Separate Peace focuses mainly around a 17 year old named Gene Forrester and his psychological development. The story is set in a boys boarding school in USA during World War II. There are four main boys in the novel and they all undergo major character changes through the story. One of them goes crazy, and the others experience severe attitude changes. Gene is caught right in the center of these changes. He is very close with all of the other three boys, and thus all of the changes affect him very much. Due to all the tension occurring in this novel because of the war and events going on at the school, there is a lot of denial of truth happening. Three of the four boys mentioned earlier deny the truth at sometime in the story. This denying of truth sometimes ends with the person who committed the fault in a bad condition at the end of the book, and sometimes in good condition. So it can be said that there were both positive and negative results for each of the denials of the truth, but these will be explained more in-depth in the following paragraphs.
Setting expatiates the theme of loss of innocence. For example, the four major characters in this story are sixteen and seventeen years old, which is the age when teenagers prepare to end their childhood and become adults. Also, the Devon school, where the story takes place, is a place where boys make the transition to full adulthood, and so this setting shows more clearly the boys' own growth. Finally, World War II, which in 1942 is raging in Europe, forces these teenage boys to grow up fast; during their seventeenth year they must evaluate everything that the war means to them and decide whether to take an active ...
War always seems to have no end. A war between countries can cross the world, whether it is considered a world war or not. No one can be saved from the reaches of a violent war, not even those locked in a safe haven. War looms over all who recognize it. For some, knowing the war will be their future provides a reason for living, but for others the war represents the snatching of their lives without their consent. Every reaction to war in A Separate Peace is different, as in life. In the novel, about boys coming of age during World War II, John Knowles uses character development, negative diction, and setting to argue that war forever changes the way we see the world and forces us to mature rapidly.
For Finny and Gene, the summer session at Devon was a time of blissful happiness and a time where they allowed themselves to become utterly overtaken by their own illusions. The summer session was the complete embodiment of peace and freedom, and Gene saw Devon as a haven of peace. To them, the war was light years away and was almost like a dream than an actual event. At Devon, it was hard for them to imagine that war could even exist. Finny and Gene forged the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session and acted out in the most wild and boisterous ways. Missing dinner or being absent from school for days to go to the beach did not even earn them a reprimand. “I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen....We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to prese...
“A Separate Peace” begins with the main character, Gene Forrester, returning to the Devon School for boys in search of two places from his youth that he has an emotional connection to. The first place is the marble steps of the First Academy Building, and the second is the tree by the river which he finds “smaller, shrunken by age” (Knowles, 14). He comes here so that he can resolve what happened there seventeen years ago and move on with his life; to find peace within himself.
Throughout A Separate Peace, John Knowles uses semiotic codes to express an adolescent’s transition into adulthood in a time of conflict and war. Barthes writes, “Ideological imperatives express themselves through a multiplicity of codes which ‘invade’ the text in the form of key signifiers. Each of these signifiers represents a digression outside of the text to an established body of knowledge which it connotes; each one functions as an abbreviated version of the entire system (code) of which it is a part,” (Semiotics, 31). These semiotic codes are often looked at as social enigmas that relate to the rules and ideologies developed by the culture of the time period, in this case at Devon Prep School in New Hampshire in 1942-43 during World War II. Codes are where semiotics, cultural values, and social structures mesh. The ideals and challenges of war parallel the friendship between the two main characters, Gene and Finny, and particularly relate to Gene’s obsession with competition and envy of his best friend and enemy. These codes impose ideological imperatives that translate from Gene and Finny’s friendship to the larger picture; they connote the loss of innocence and transformation into adulthood, and ultimately define the dominant values of the time period’s culture, as well as the overall meaning of Knowles’ text. Through the use
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.
In times of war, such as these, the importance for everyone to know where they stand on the idea of patriotism so they can voice or enact their opinion to the government and the people around them in a more clear and fair fashion is multiplied. The idea of patriotism can often be an obscure one, and during times of heightened security patriotism is a more spoken upon subject. Discussing the many different views of what patriotism means is a key step in better defining patriotism for all people. Barbara Kingsolver says in her article, “My patriotic duty is to recapture my flag from the men now waving it in the name of jingoism and censorship” (Pg. 2). What she means by this is that the idea of patriotism is being morphed into something it is not. She believes patriotism should encourage free speech and criticism of our leaders in times of difficult decisions. Instead, what is happening is patriotism is suggesting more fascist ideals than democratic ideals. Barbara believes her duty is to recapture the true meaning of patriotism and let everyone know what that meaning is. She wants everyone to feel open towards voicing t...
During the 1940’s in America, times were hard. It was a time of war. In this period of history, people found themselves looking for peace and innocence. John Knowles’s A Separate Peace illustrates a boarding school, one of the only places left to find peace, where the main characters, Gene and Phineas, face their own internal wars with each other. Starting out their friendship seems strong and everlasting but as the novel progresses, like all friendships, the fire between them seems to dwindle. Although they share the goal of excelling, Phineas and Gene clearly differ in athletics, academics, and personality.
The tragic novel A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, apprises a story of Gene, an individual who fights his inner battle between love and envy for his best friend, Finny. The film and the novel’s events are comparatively similar, but there are also many differences between the two sources. Many significant characters do not appear in the film that are present in the novel, and many symbolic plot events are relatively similar in the novel adaption.
John Knowles was born on 1962 in Fairmont, West Virginia and passed away on November 29, 2001. He was 15 years old when he became a student at Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school. After he graduated from there is 1945, he decided to join the war effort as part of the U.S. Army Air Force’s Aviation Cadet Program. John went to Europe and worked as a journalist until the mid 1950’s and then returned to the U.S in 1957. After returning, he took a job with the associate editor at Holiday magazine, Thornton Wilder. Wilder was interested in Knowles’ writing and started working on “ A Separate Piece.” This was Knowles’ first novel and his most successful one too. Knowles was given the honors of writer-in-residence at both Princeton University and University of North Carolina. A Separate Peace illustrates Knowles’ idea and understanding of the war as he, himself comes out through the narrator of Gene. Gene does not only struggle with the idea of the war, but he must overcome his jealousy and hostility toward his best friend Finny.
Chapter 1 of ‘A Separate Peace’ begins by introducing the narrator of the story returning from Devon school, where he was schooling as a boarder. Upon his arrival, he gets disappointed when realizing that the school appears preserved, unchanged, and above all looking newer than before. Besides the unchanged buildings, the narrator realizes there is unchanged emotion, something he never recognized then. The narrator realizes that over the fifteen years out of school, he has grown and now everything around him looks much smaller. The narrator quotes, “the longer things stay, the more they become changed’ (Bodden 11). He made this quote in reference to the school tree which had over the years become smaller, and weary.
Everyone has a life-story and each one is different. Some life-stories have been more difficult than others but each one has its “ups” and “downs”. John Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace focuses on a student named Gene and his life at Devon School. Gene’s time at Devon was a particularly “down” episode in his life. Gene was best friends with Phineas-also known as Finny-but they still had some notably rough patches. There was even a point where they weren’t sure if they were friends anymore. Another student named Brinker didn’t start it off particularly well with Gene. They became closer as friends, but near the end of the novel, Gene isn’t sure if he can trust Brinker again. Besides just World War II, there was another war going in this story,