Similarities Between George Orwell's 1984 'And John Knowles' A Separate Peace

581 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Social identity and social interaction

The Loss of Personal Identity: An Exploration of the Loss of Identity to a Singular Person or Group of People

Inquiry Subject: Connections with people that allow loss of personal identity
Guiding Question(s): How does society and the people in our lives mold or affect our personal identity?
Novels: George Orwell’s 1984 and John Knowles’ A Separate Peace
Rationale: Personal Identity is necessary to exceed in life, but is often hard to maintain and be at peace with. As I am going to college in August, I need to know myself and my ideologies to succeed, and make wise decisions regarding my health, personal life, and school work. In a time when everything will be new and unstable, I need to know I can have stability in myself and not rely and loose myself on the behalf of others as Gene did in A Separate …show more content…

A Separate Peace is the story of two young boys named Gene and Finny at Devon (a boarding school) in the midst of World War Two, who are best friends. Gene alters himself to fit in with Finny and attempts to be “equal” with Phineas’ talents and way of life, but eventually loses himself to what he believes he needs to be and act like to be Finny’s friend, and destroys his relationship with Finny in the process. Both books share a somewhat dysfunctional setting where the main characters struggle with the ability to achieve individuality which explores the concept of society and the people which inhabit its effects on individual thought and action that is very relevant to modern society with the increase of technology. I know what I have read from the novels, but wish to explore this concept further to find accurate information on the concept of

Show More
Related

  • Compare And Contrast A Separate Peace

    447 Words  | 1 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Denial of Truth in John Knowles' A Separate Peace

    2063 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Comparing Maturity in Separate Peace and All Quiet on the Western Front

    2105 Words  | 5 Pages

    In A Separate Peace and All Quiet on the Western Front, the characters all go through this process of growing up, where they begin as children and proceed on to being soldiers, finally emerging as strong, insightful men by the end of the book. The characters in A Separate Peace are first seen as children. Gene and Phineas (or Finny), the main characters in A Separate Peace, are first portrayed as regular teenage boys, full of life, energy, and humor. Ready to find fun in everything, the boys even make games out of the war, including the "Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session" (Knowles 24) and "blitzball" (Knowles 29). They jump out of trees as a substitute for jumping out of a plane and throwing a round ball around, pretending that it's a bomb.

    Read More

  • Brinker Hadley In A Separate Peace

    691 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dr. Wayne Dyer once said, “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” This saying is also true for the personality of Brinker Hadley, a character in A Separate Peace. In this novel, Brinker and his group of friends spend their time at Devon School making memories with exciting, yet dangerous adventures. With the idea of World War II in the back of their minds, the boys are trying to focus on the joys in life. However, a situation caused by Brinker’s questioning brings great sorrow. Brinker Hadley represents a headstrong, lawful, and perhaps misconceived character in this novel,

    Read More

  • Jealousy In John Knowles A Separate Peace

    944 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the narrator, Gene Forrester struggles to earn and preserve a separate peace. The story takes place in a remote boarding school named Devon, in New Hampshire. While Gene and Finny are in school, World War II is taking place. The author clearly explains an important story about the jealousy between Gene and his best friend, Phineas. Gene suspects that Finny is trying to sabotage his grades, and Gene allows his jealousy to control his actions. Therefore, Gene misinterprets their relationship by thinking that they shared enmity towards each other, and this caused Gene to enter a world of jealousy and hatred, which ultimately leads to Finny’s death. By examining this jealousy, John Knowles

    Read More

  • A Separate Peace By John Knowles: A Literary Analysis

    1455 Words  | 3 Pages

    Of these two main reasons A Separate Peace has been challenged, the graphic language is perhaps the most interesting. In 1980 the book was challenged in Vernon-Verona-Sherill, NY School District on the basis that it contained “explicit sexual material” (ALA). In a literary analysis of the book states that, “the central theme of A Separate Peace is finding your true Identity and Self-Realization of one’s self.” This central theme can be taken as being finding out who you are because at the beginning of the novel when Gene wasn't sure of who he was, and basically just followed along with whatever crazy ideas Finny had come up with, such as being the first ones in

    Read More

  • Effects of the War on the Students of Devon in A Separate Peace

    1167 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Inner Conflict In John Knowles A Separate Peace

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    An Analysis of Inner Conflict in A Separate Peace In 1942, a group of prep school boys take courses to allow them extra time to prepare for the armed forces. Gene, a conservative intellectual, befriends Finny, a free-spirited adventurer. The two form a club where they must dive from a high tree limb into the Devon River. He becomes anxious that his friend is taking time away from his studies.

    Read More

  • Gene and Finny in A Separate Piece

    1332 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the novel A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles creates a unique relationship between the two main characters Gene Forrester and Phineas, also known as Finny. The boys have a love hate relationship, which becomes the base of the problems throughout the book. The setting of this novel, a preparatory school in New Hampshire known as Devon, creates a peaceful environment where World War will not corrupt the boys. The boys might be protected from the war, but they are not protected from each other. Throughout the book Finny manipulates Gene. These reoccurring manipulations cause Gene to follow in Finny's footsteps and begin to live through Finny. The lives of the two boys change dramatically when an accident occurs. Instead of Gene living through Finny, Finny begins to live through Gene.

    Read More

  • Personal Identity by Derek Parfit

    1917 Words  | 4 Pages

    In his 1971 paper “Personal Identity”, Derek Parfit posits that it is possible and indeed desirable to free important questions from presuppositions about personal identity without losing all that matter. In working out how to do so, Parfit comes to the conclusion that “the question of identity has no importance” (Parfit, 1971, p. 4.2:3). In this essay, I will attempt to show that Parfit’s thesis is a valid one, with positive implications for human behaviour. The first section of the essay will examine the thesis in further detail, and the second will assess how Parfit’s claims fare in the face of criticism. Problems of personal identity generally involve questions about what makes one the person one is and what it takes for the same person to exist at separate times (Olson, 2010).

    Read More

  • John Perry A Dialogue On Personal Identity

    1153 Words  | 3 Pages

    Personal identity, in the context of philosophy, does not attempt to address clichéd, qualitative questions of what makes us us. Instead, personal identity refers to numerical identity or sameness over time. For example, identical twins appear to be exactly alike, but their qualitative likeness in appearance does not make them the same person; each twin, instead, has one and only one identity – a numerical identity. As such, philosophers studying personal identity focus on questions of what has to persist for an individual to keep his or her numerical identity over time and of what the pronoun “I” refers to when an individual uses it. Over the years, theories of personal identity have been established to answer these very questions, but the

    Read More

  • The Significance Of Gene's Identity In A Separate Peace By John Knowles

    1006 Words  | 3 Pages

    The novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles immensely and remarkably captures the shaping and essence of Gene’s identity through his outlook on the war, the atmosphere of Devon, his intense relationship with his best friend Finny. To start off, Gene’s identity is advertised and carved through the competition

    Read More

  • Philosophy Paper #1: Personal Identity

    1056 Words  | 3 Pages

    What is personal identity? This question has been asked and debated by philosophers for centuries. The problem of personal identity is determining what conditions and qualities are necessary and sufficient for a person to exist as the same being at one time as another. Some think personal identity is physical, taking a materialistic perspective believing that bodily continuity or physicality is what makes a person a person with the view that even mental things are caused by some kind of physical occurrence. Others take a more idealist approach with the belief that mental continuity is the sole factor in establishing personal identity holding that physical things are just reflections of the mind. One more perspective on personal identity and the one I will attempt to explain and defend in this paper is that personal identity requires both physical and psychological continuity; my argument is as follows:

    Read More

  • A Separate Peace

    1011 Words  | 3 Pages

    The setting of this novel, A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, is set at Devon School during the early years of World War II. This novel is gloomy and melancholy throughout due to many conflicts. In the beginning of the novel, Gene is an older version of himself reflecting back on his years of attending Devon School.

    Read More

  • James Marcia's Identity Status Theory

    1205 Words  | 3 Pages

    In conclusion, the formation of one’s identity has many components. Beginning at the onset of adolescence and continuing to expand, grow and form and reform as we live through the struggles or success of life. Many theorists have endeavored to clarify the development of identity formation. However, Erik Erickson offered one significant theory involving the formation of one’s identity. Expounding on Erickson theory, Marcia developed his Identity Status Model according to the existence or absence of crisis and commitments. These four statuses, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and achievement can combine in various ways to produce a self. One’s sense of identity is determined largely by the choices and commitments made, therefore, having a well-developed sense of self can provide an individual with insight to their strengths, weaknesses, and individual uniqueness. An individual that finds themselves

    Read More

More about Similarities Between George Orwell's 1984 'And John Knowles' A Separate Peace

Open Document