Water In John Knowles 'A Separate Peace'

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

The rain had washed away his mascara and left him exposed to his real emotions, and there he was cleansed. The rain was not just weather, it was “never just rain” (Foster 75). Rain had a deeper meaning than initially perceived. But rain is not the only thing that cleanses people, baptism does as well. In religious aspects of baptism, sin is supposed to cleanse you of your sins, and a person only does it once they are ready to publicly profess their religion. So, unlike rain, “the thing about baptism is, you have to be ready to receive it” (Foster 157). In the story, Gene and Phineas are best friends, and they decide to jump off the tree one day. Gene was fearful of Phineas because Gene believed that Phineas was trying to sabotage his place as valedictorian of the class. So, Gene jounces the limb of the tree and causes Phineas to lose his balance and fall. Phineas “hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud. With unthinking sureness, I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear forgotten” (Knowles 52). Baptism must be done with sureness, and Gene shows definite sureness in this part of A Separate