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A separate peace is a nation's agreement to cease military hostilities with another even though the former country had previously entered into a military alliance with other states that remain at war with the latter country. For example, at the start of the First World War, Russia was a member, like the United Kingdom and France, of the Triple ...
The saying "a separate peace" refers to an individual's attempt to find personal tranquility amidst the chaos of a larger conflict. In A Separate Peace, Gene's separate peace involves self ...
The phrase "separate peace" is a military term, and it's a bit complicated. If one nation has an alliance with another nation, it can refuse to fight that other nation's enemy by forming a separate peace. In other words, your best friend Betsy is at war with that pain-in-the-butt chick from shop class, Chelsea.
- Introduction
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Media Adaptations
- Themes
- Topics For Further Study
- Style
- Historical Context
- Compare & Contrast
Since it was first published in 1959, John Knowles's novel A Separate Peace has gradually acquired the status of a minor classic. Set in the summer of 1942 at a boys' boarding school in New Hampshire, the novel focuses on the relationship between two roommates and best friends, Gene Forrester and Phineas. Both approaching their last year of high sc...
John Knowles was born on 16 September 1926, in the coal mining town of Fairmont, West Virginia. He was the third child of James Myron and Mary Beatrice Shea Knowles. At the age of fifteen, Knowles attended New Hampshire's prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy. The Devon School, where most of the action of A Separate Peace takes place, is based on Phi...
In John Knowles's A Separate Peace, Gene Forrester returns to visit New Hampshire's Devon School after a fifteen-year absence. He recalls his complex relationship with his roommate and best friend Phineas. His narrative begins during the summer of 1942, when Phineas goads him into jumping off a tree into the Devon River. Phineas—nicknamed Finny—is ...
Chet Douglass
Gene Forrester's rival for the position of class valedictorian. Unlike Gene, Chet has a genuine interest in learning and does not thrive simply on competition.
Finny
SeePhineas
Gene Forrester
The narrator of A Separate Peace, Gene as an adult recalls himself at sixteen: a lonely intellectual with the tendency of analyzing his and everyoneelse's motives. At various times in the novel, he is highly competitive, selfish, insecure, and combative. On other occasions, he is courageous, mature, and dependable. Throughout the novel, Gene compares and contrasts himself with his best friend, Finny, and often falls short in his own estimation. Although Gene is obviously the more scholarly of...
A Separate Peacewas adapted as a film directed by Larry Peerce, starring John Heyl and Parker Stevenson, Paramount Pictures, 1972, available from Paramount Home Video, Home Vision Cinema. Although...
Guilt and Innocence
In John Knowles's novel that chronicles the coming of age of two prep-school friends, one character—Finny—loses much of his trustfulness and innocence, while the other—Gene—progresses toward self-knowledge and maturity. That A Separate Peace takes place in the first half of the 1940s explains so many references to war. In this novel, however, the real struggle is fought in the hearts of the characters, not on the battlefield. After Gene causes Finny's crippling fall, everything that follows,...
War
On one level, A Separate Peace can be read as a war novel. Its title is taken from Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms, in which the book's protagonist, Lt. Frederic Henry, declares his own private armistice during World War I. However, unlike Hemingway's novel, Knowles's book does not concern soldiers on the battlefield; rather, it focuses on the impact of war on the lives of male adolescents, none of whom have yet engaged in combat. Despite their lack of direct involvement in World...
Explore the reasons for the American involvement in World War II. Compare the American degree of popular support to that of such other wars as World War I, the Vietnam War, and the Korean War.Compare and contrast three significant fictional works about World War II. Some possibilities include James Jones's novel From Here to Eternity, Norman Mailer's novel The Naked and the Dead, and Ar...Discuss the economic impact of World War II on the United States and on Europe.Point of View
Told in first person ("I") by Gene Forrester, a man in his thirties recalling his adolescence, A Separate Peacebegins with Gene's visit to the Devon School. The first pages of the novel mainly describe the physical landscape of the institution; the rest tells Gene's story, a tale in which he serves as both an observer and a participant at the center of the action. As Ronald Weber notes, "Generally, first-person narration gives the reader a heightened sense of immediacy, a sense of close invol...
Setting
Most of the action of the novel is confined to the Devon School, the prep school based on Phillips Exeter. An exception is found in Chapter 10, in which Gene visits his friend Leper in his family's Vermont home. When Gene revisits the Devon School, he is particularly interested in confronting two fearful places on campus. The first is the First Academy Building, a Georgian-style red-brick structure, in which a group of Devon students brought Gene to accuse him of causing the accident that cri...
Symbolism
A Separate Peace is a book full of symbolism. One pair of symbols can be found in two rivers that flow through the school: the Devon and the Naguamsett. Gene remembers the freshwater Devon River fondly, for this was the body of water that he and Finny had leaped into many times from the tree. Ironically, after Finny's accident, Gene does not remember the Devon River with fear or disgust; the river to him symbolizes the carefree summer days, a peaceful time. On the other hand, the Naguamsett R...
American Feelings about War
Although first published in 1959 in England, A Separate Peace is about an earlier period, specifically the early 1940s when United States had declared its involvement in World War II. It must be remembered that World War II brought out enormous patriotism in most Americans, whether they were actually working in war-related jobs, engaged in combat, or neither. While intelligent adolescents such as Gene Forrester and Hadley Brinker in ASeparate Peacemight have mixed feelings about being drafted...
1940s: In the middle of World War II, the United States had compulsory draft registration for young men, most of whom expected to eventually enlist in the military.Early 1960s: While the United Sta...1940s: America declared its involvement in World War II, and had troops in Europe and the Pacific.Early 1960s: Although America had sent some troops to Vietnam, their commitment to the war effort w...1940s: The path to success for young men from upper-class white families often led from the best prep school to an Ivy League university.Early 1960s: University enrollment soared as the baby boom g...A Separate Peace, novel by John Knowles, published in 1959. It recalls with psychological insight the maturing of a 16-year-old student at a New England preparatory school during World War II. Looking back to his youth, the adult Gene Forrester reflects on his life as a student at Devon School in New Hampshire in 1942.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
A Separate Peace. Famous Quotes Explained. I found it. I found a single sustaining thought. The thought was, You and Phineas are even already. You are even in enmity. You are both coldly driving ahead for yourselves alone. . . . I felt better. Yes, I sensed it like the sweat of relief when nausea passes away; I felt better.
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A Separate Peace is most often associated with another famous first novel about the struggles of an adolescent prep school student: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Both The Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace depict the physical and emotional turmoil of adolescence with an unprecedented dose of candor and detail.
