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Good and evil in the history of literature
Morality in literature
Good and evil in the history of literature
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In A Separate Peace, the topic of good versus evil is one of the most predominate topics found throughout the book. Along with identity, rivalry, and many other topics, this topic is displayed by the author through the characters and through the use of plot and setting. In a world full of good and bad people, the bad always tries to conquer the good. Sometimes when good and bad coexist within one person, there is an internal battle between the two, trying to conquer the other. These external conflicts along with internal conflicts can be seen throughout the book in many different situations. In A Separate Peace, the contrast between good versus evil displays conflict between one’s self and in the relationships with the external world. The threat …show more content…
and topic of war strikes fear in many individuals of all ages. Not knowing if you and your loved ones will be safe in the moment of attack can be a fearful and incomprehensible experience for anyone. Though this is true, this fear and confusion probably cannot be compared to that experienced in a child, especially a child who still lives in their innocence, “Children have been identified as among the most susceptible in the population to the negative effects of trauma” (Meier).
The effect of war on the innocence of childhood could be one that affects a child for the rest of their life, particularly when that child is forced to be involved in the brutal, traumatizing events that can occur. “Traumatic events can be placed on a continuum based on the degree to which a child is exposed directly to extremely frightening and prolonged stressors that carry long-term impact on personal wellbeing or access to social supports” (Costello, Masten, & Pine). In A Separate Peace, the main character, Gene Forrester, and his classmates are all preparing for entering …show more content…
the horrific and traumatizing world of war full of death and pure evil. Though they are preparing for this world, at this age they are still living in their innocence, “We were still calmly...playing tag in the river further downstream (Knowles 15).” Not aware of how horrible and dangerous the world of adulthood is, they misjudge adulthood and the battlefield as a dangerous playground that they eagerly want to be a part of. After seeing the how the war affected one of their classmates, they begin to realize that the world is full of lurking evil that desires to take and strip them of any good or innocence that still exist in them. “Fear seized my stomach like a cramp. I didn’t care what I said to him now; I was now worried about myself... I and all of us were on the brink of the army (Knowles 144).” As soon as they graduate from Phillips Exeter Academy, they will immediately be enlisted into joining World War II. This unavoidable fate that the boys are forced to deal with cause tension not only internally, but also in the world around them. Externally, tension can be seen in between the relationships that they have with each other, “…there were few relationships among us at Devon not based on rivalry” (Knowles). This is most prominently seen in the relationship between Gene and Phineas. Though the two are great friends, love and hatred towards Phineas coexist in the heart of Gene. This rivalry between the two could be seen as a symbol of the chaos that is caused by the thought of war in the mind of Gene. Gene understands that for him to be able to survive the war, he must leave behind his childhood innocence and enter into the realm of becoming a man. In Gene’s mind, he believes that Phineas is holding him back and keeping him from becoming the person that he needs to become to survive adulthood and the war. He subconsciously decides that to accomplish this, he needs to eliminate his friend. Though Gene did not intentionally plan to kill his friend, his action of jiggling the tree caused him to fall and break his leg, “Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step towards him, and then my knees bent, and I jounced the limb” (Knowles 59). This event and the events that followed because of the tree incident ultimately led to Phineas’ tragic death. Internally, Gene’s conflict is with trying to find his identity. The theme of identity is seen throughout the entire storyline, and Gene spends this time attempting to free himself from the hold that Phineas has on him, “I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas” (Knowles 85). Most teens during this time of their lives experience confusion when it comes to who they are. “…the fragile masculine self is fueled by at least two coexisting, inextricably intertwined, commingling dynamics- fear and self-loathing…” (Blazina &Watkins). This is the period between being a child who lives in innocence and between preparing for the world of adulthood. The boys in the book are not only preparing for adulthood, but they are also dealing with the threat of death. War only complicates this already complicated process that they have to go through. Gene seems to have it the hardest due to the fact that his identity is locked up in the existence of his best friend Phineas. He tries to find himself through Phineas and wants to be like him so much so that he dressed in Phineas’ clothes after his fall, “The sense of transformation stayed with me throughout the evening...That night I slept easily” (Knowles 62). This gave him a sense of confidence, which is something that he doesn’t have on his own. Gene is also insecure and has low self-esteem, “…I was not of the same quality of him” (Knowles 59). Gene has mixed feelings when it comes to Phineas. On one hand he admires him and almost see him as a big brother. Though on the other hand he has so much hate and jealousy towards him, that he ultimately causes Phineas’ death. Gene is also dealing with an internal battle between good and bad. He tends to hurt people even when he doesn’t mean to, “It struck me then that I was injuring him again. It occurred to me that this could be an even deeper injury than what I had done before” (Knowles 70). Though he has a sense of goodness and innocence that is trying to overcome the bad part of him, darkness and evil still lives in his heart. The good and innocent nature of him wants to support his friend and make him proud, while the other side, the evil in him, wants to eliminate him. After the incident, he had to deal with the guilt of harming his best friend, “I burst out crying into my hand…” (64). He felt bad that he ended the chances of Phineas ever playing sports again, “Sports are finished for him, after an accident like that” (63). The relationship between Gene and Phineas is one that pushes the story along. While the book could be considered a war novel due to the pressing issue of preparing for World War II, the rivalry between the two in Gene’s mind is the war that the author focuses on. As the story progresses, Gene’s feelings and view of Phineas becomes toxic and ends up harming their friendship. Gene is envious towards Phineas because of his athletic abilities and his personality. Gene is blinded by his jealousy so much so that he truly believed for a period that Phineas was jealous of his academic abilities and that he was trying to cause him to fail, “Finny had deliberately set out to wreck my studies” (53). This belief is false and the competition and rivalry between the two only exist in Gene’s mind. During one of their conversations, Phineas joked with him about how he was jealous of Gene’s academic abilities by saying, “I’d kill myself out of jealous envy” (52). Though he was obviously joking with him, Gene took this statement serious, which only confirmed what he believed. Hearing that his friend was jealous of him set off a “…chain of explosion in [his] brain” (53). In this moment, Gene’s envy turns into hatred, “I found a single sustaining thought. You did hate him for breaking that school swimming recorded, but so what? (53). After falling from the tree, Phineas has a feeling that Gene purposely caused him to fall out of the tree, “I did have this idea, this feeling that when you were standing there beside me, y- I don’t know, I had a kind of feeling…” (66). Though due to the good and innocent nature of Phineas, he doubts it and even feels bad for accusing his best friend of such a horrible thing, “And this feeling doesn’t make any sense” (66). The author uses doubles, a literature device, to compare and contrast the two different perceptions that one could have on the outlook of life.
In this use of a double, Gene represents the group of those who may go through life with a pessimistic, vicious attitude towards life. Gene wants to be a leader and the authority figure in his life. Throughout the book, he understood that his friend Phineas was the one controlling him and keeping him from becoming the person that he wanted to become. Unfortunately for Phineas, he was not aware of these thoughts zooming around in Gene’s head. Gene wanted to dominate and be on top so much that he did not care what it took to achieve that. He ended up injuring Phineas and ultimately causing his death in the end. Most people would be extremely sad if their best friend or someone they were really close to died. In Gene’s case though, “[Gene] did not cry then or ever about Finny. [He] did not cry even when [he] stood watching him being lowered into his family's strait-laced burial ground outside of Boston” (Knowles 194). Gene saw everything as a competition and ended up making an enemy out of his own best friend. These characteristics in Gene are used by the author to display the corrupted side of reality and of the populace of evil in the world. Conversely, Phineas is appointed by the author to represent the group of people who go through life with a positive approach of life. Phineas refused to see the evil in the world and in his own
best friend, “And this sense doesn’t make any sense” (Knowles 66). He refused to think that Gene would purposely cause him to fall out of the tree and ultimately end his athletic career. With Gene as his primary focus, the author zoomed in on his reality and related World War one with the battles that he was facing within himself. Knowles used elements such as characters, plot, and even the setting to show the effects of war on people, but more specifically on children or those who still remain in their innocence. The book A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a book packed with literary devices used for the purpose of displaying the opposing sides of good versus evil. Through the use of characters, plot, and setting, the author achieved showing the readers how a person’s perspective of life can affect their quality of life and how the opposing sides of good versus evil can play role in the world and within each person.
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.
...it may help us arrive at an understanding of the war situation through the eyes of what were those of an innocent child. It is almost unique in the sense that this was perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to directly give literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the child-killer. While the book does give a glimpse of the war situation, the story should be taken with a grain of salt.
This psychological memoir is written from the eyes of Ishmael Beah and it describes his life through the war and through his recovery. War is one of the most horrific things that could ever happen to anyone. Unwilling young boy soldiers, innocent mothers and children are all affected. In most instances, the media or government does not show the horrific parts of war, instead they focus on the good things that happen to make the people happy and not cause political issues. In his book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah dispels the romanticism around war through the loss of childhood innocence, the long road of emotional recovery and the mental and physical effects of war.
War has been a constant part of human history. It has greatly affected the lives of people around the world. These effects, however, are extremely detrimental. Soldiers must shoulder extreme stress on the battlefield. Those that cannot mentally overcome these challenges may develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Sadly, some resort to suicide to escape their insecurities. Soldiers, however, are not the only ones affected by wars; family members also experience mental hardships when their loved ones are sent to war. Timothy Findley accurately portrays the detrimental effects wars have on individuals in his masterpiece The Wars.
...and wounds soldiers but murdering their spirits. War hurts families and ruins lives. Both stories showed how boys became in terrible situations dealing with war.
The characters of Gene and Finny are as opposite as apples and oranges. Finny is
Brenda Shoshanna once stated, “All conflict we experience in the world, is a conflict within our own selves.” This quote recognizes how much conflict influences our everyday lives and personality. The wise words were especially true for Gene, the main character in A separate peace, who let his battles with other characters and the society of his time become his own internal battles. In John Knowles’s novel, A separate peace, all the types of conflict are shown through the main character Gene.
In the novel The Wars, Robert Ross is a sensitive nineteen year old boy who experiences first-hand the horrors of battle as a Canadian Soldier in the First World War in hopes of trying to find who he is. Being named a Lieutenant shortly after arriving in Europe, Robert is thrust into combat. War has been a constant part of human history. It has greatly affected the lives of people around the world. These effects, however, are extremely detrimental. Soldiers must shoulder extreme stress on the battlefield. Those that cannot mentally overcome these challenges may develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Timothy Findley shows the effects wars have on individuals in his novel The Wars. Findley suggests that war can change a persons behaviour in many different ways, however it is seen to be negatively more often then not. Robert Ross, the main character of The Wars, shows symptoms of what is known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in today’s society.
Innocence is often lost in childhood. Maturity is gained through experience which takes time. This idea is featured in The Wars by Timothy Findley, and in William Faulkner’s “Two Soldiers.” In the “Two Soldiers” the young boy is unnamed. Faulkner wants all readers to relate to the character. Timothy Findley names his protagonist but also reveals how his innocence is eroded during war. Both authors focus on maturity through adversity as innocence is lost in wartime environments, which changes the heroes’ lives forever.
Machel, Graca & Sebastian Salgado. The Impact of War on Children. London: C. Hurst, 2001.
Bracken, Patrick and Celia Petty (editors). Rethinking the Trauma of War. New York, NY: Save the Children Fund, Free Association Books, Ltd, 1998.
Singer, P.W. “Children at War.” Military History 24.6 (2007): 1-5. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
Many individuals look at soldiers for hope and therefore, add load to them. Those that cannot rationally overcome these difficulties may create Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tragically, some resort to suicide to get away from their insecurities. Troops, notwithstanding, are not by any means the only ones influenced by wars; relatives likewise encounter mental hardships when their friends and family are sent to war. Timothy Findley precisely depicts the critical impact wars have on people in his novel by showing how after-war characters are not what they were at the beginning.
Wells, Karen C.. "Children and youth at war." Childhood in a global perspective. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2009. 152. Print.