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Summary Of A Separate Peace By John Knowles

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How The War Influenced Lives At Devon A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, is a fictional novel that depicts life at Devon, a boarding school. Set during World War II, teens Gene and Finny’s lives at Devon are overshadowed by the fact that at the end of the four years, they will be going to the war. The influence of the war can be seen through the students helping out with the war effort, their friend Leper enlisting, and through Finny’s perspective on the war. The students at Devon do whatever they can to help out with the war effort. In chapter 7, they pick apples. “First there was the local apple crop, threatening to rot because all the harvesters had all gone into the army or war factories. We spent several shining days picking them and were paid cash for it (Knowles, p.92).” Picking apples made the boys think of the war as boring, because they were left with the simple job. The Devon boys also helped out with the large amounts of snow. The analysis on spark notes relates their actions to their feelings. “Ultimately, the war has only an indirect and insidious effect on the students at Devon. It causes a tense feeling of unsettlement among the boys, disrupting their former lives yet never fully releasing them onto the new horizons at which it hints. The boys …show more content…

After he broke his leg, he denied there even was a war. He explains this in chapter 12, saying “I’ll hate it everywhere if I’m not in this war! Why do you think I kept saying there wasn’t any war all winter? I was going to keep saying it until two seconds after I got a letter from Ottawa or Chungking or some place saying, ‘Yes, you can enlist with us’ … Then there would have been a war.” Through this passage, this reveals how Finny truly felt after he was crippled and unable to play sports or join the army anymore. Finny denied that there even was a war at all, and none of the other students had experienced the war yet except Leper, who

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A Separate Peace begins when Gene Forrester returns to Devon boarding school, the school in which he attended during world war two. It had been fifteen years since he had been there. Walking through the campus Gene remembers his time spent there. The one he remembered a lot was the summer session in '42 when he was 16.

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Leper asks Gene, “Would they bother you if you did, if you happened to keep imagining a man’s head on a woman’s body, or if sometimes the arm of a chair turned into a human arm if you looked at it too long, things like that?” This had a large impact on readers as it strikes some of the scariest, and deepest fears that we bury within society. The picture of a innocent person being completely dismantled and thrown back together changes our whole perspective on what the war really did to people. It relates back to Devon as an example of the unpreparedness of the whole school for what was to come. Although many of the boys understood their fate, they did not understand that it was something that could envelop their mind and destroy their sense of peace.

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In the novel, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, Gene is a teenage boy who attends the boarding school called Devon. Devon is a sanctuary for young men before in the midst of World War II. The boys’ lives are surrounded by influences of war and influences on each other. Gene lives with his roommate Phineas (Finny) who he spends the majority of his time with. Being surrounding by each other all the time, all the boys in Devon influence who each other are.

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Shoveling snow and picking apples was how Gene and his classmates did there part for the war effort. On page 92 of A Separate Peace Gene narrates “In the same way war, beginning almost humorously with announcements about maids and days spent apple-picking, commenced its invasion of the school, the early snow was commandeered as its advance guard.” This quote shows that the boys at Devon had kept the war at the back of their minds but the snow has brought the war to the forefront of their everyday thoughts.

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The novel I’m reading, A Separate Peace by John Knowles, has an interesting setting that makes the events of the story seem more stark and relatable. Most of the story takes place at Devon school during the second world war, though the introduction of Gene revisiting the school actually takes place 15 years later. School life takes on more of a background role, grounding the otherwise aimless adventures of Gene and Phineas in a semblance of reality. The summer days are a bright backdrop for brighter events, and as the story goes on, the warmth of the seasons fade, along with much of the happiness and security the characters wish to find. Gene and his friends can feel the pressure of the war throughout the story.

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