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A Study Guide for A Separate Peace by John Knowles T H E G L E N C O E L I T E

A Study Guide for A Separate Peace by John Knowles T H E G L E N C O E L I T E R A T U R E L I B R A R Y i Copyright © by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. A Separate Peace Study Guide 9 knuckled down, learned by myself how to study, discovered I had a brain which had more potential than a knack for writing, and by the end of that first term, I was passing every course comfortably. . . . Meanwhile, I was falling in love with Exeter. Knowles’s affection for the school is reflected in his first—and most famous—novel, A Separate Peace. Shortly after Knowles entered Exeter, the United Sates declared war on Japan and entered World War II. Like other young men of the time, Knowles went into the military after he gradu- ated from high school. He trained to be a pilot in the United States Army Air Force aviation program, but when the war ended he decided to go back to school. He attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1949. During his twenties, Knowles traveled and earned a living as a freelance writer. He wrote the stories “Phineas” and “A Turn in the Sun,” which were to form the core of A Separate Peace. Knowles then took a job as an associate editor of a travel magazine. Early each morning, before going to the office, he worked on A Separate Peace. The novel, which was first published in England in 1959 and the United States in 1960, proved to be a success—so much that Knowles was able to resign from his job and devote his time to writing and to travel. Since then, Knowles has written a variety of novels, a short story collection, a travel book, and several essays. None of these works has been as success- ful as A Separate Peace, but the fact does not seem to trouble him. He says that because he does not write with a particular audience in mind he is delighted that he has found any audi- ence at all. Knowles may be too modest. He is likely to continue to have an audience for many years to come. Today, Knowles lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he still writes. Meet John Knowles All of my books are based on places, places I know very well and feel very deeply about. I begin with that place and then the characters and the plot emerge from it. . . A Separate Peace began with a playing field at Exeter Academy. —John Knowles uthor John Knowles was born in 1926 in Fairmont, West Virginia, deep in the heart of coal-mining country. Although some of his works reflect his West Virginia roots—in A Vein of Riches, for example, he tells the story of an early twentieth-century miners strike—Knowles’s best-known works are set in New England. His father and mother were originally from Massachusetts, and the family often spent sum- mer vacations there. Knowles’s love of New England stems from his experiences as a student. At the age of fif- teen, he applied to an elite New Hampshire boarding school, Phillips Exeter Academy. Much to his surprise, he was admitted. At first, Knowles felt out of place. He has said that his classmates seemed “too eastern for me, too Yankee, too tough,” and that he found the New Hampshire winter “breathtakingly cold.” Moreover, his grades were not the best. He admits: It quickly seemed probable that I would flunk out. . . . Then somehow or other I A 10 A Separate Peace Study Guide Copyright © by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. To read A Separate Peace is to discover a novel which is completely satisfactory and yet so provocative that the reader wishes immediately to return to it. —James Ellis, “A Separate Peace: The Fall from Innocence” It is unusual for an author’s first novel to earn awards and a wide audience, yet John Knowles’s A Separate Peace did just that. In 1960, the year that the novel was first published in the United States, the book won both the William Faulkner Award and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award. About ten years later, the story was adapted for the screen and made into a movie. Today, A Separate Peace is standard reading in many high schools. Why is the novel so popular and so well respected? One reason may be the time in which the novel is set. The action takes place during the early years of America’s involvement in World War II, a period in which many teenaged boys faced a difficult decision: Should they enlist or wait to be drafted into the armed services? As a teenager during World War II, Knowles himself faced this decision, and he drew on memories of this experience and others to portray what it is like to be a young man during wartime. Many critics consider the portrayal to be sensitive and convincing. In the words of Warren Miller: Mr. Knowles has something to say about youth and war that few contemporary novelists have attempted to say and none has said better. Although World War II affects the lives of the characters in the story, it would be wrong to call A Separate Peace a novel about the war. The story does not take place overseas, in the thick of battle, but rather in the United States, at a fictional New England boys’ school named Devon. Knowles based Devon School on Phillips Exeter Academy, the school he attended as a teenager. The author affectionately recalls a summer that he spent there: The great trees, the thick clinging ivy, the expanses of playing fields, the winding black- water river, the pure air all began to sort of intoxicate me. Classroom windows were open; the aroma of flowers and shrubbery floated in. We were in shirt sleeves; the masters [teachers] were relaxed. Studies now were easy for me. The summer of 1943 at Exeter was as happy a time as I ever had in my life. Similarly, Knowles based many of the characters on former classmates of his. He has said that Phineas (“Finny”) was, in part, inspired by David Hackett, a classmate who went on to play hockey on a U.S. Olympic team. The inspiration for Brinker Hadley was Gore Vidal, an Exeter gradu- ate who today is a noted author. Knowles loosely based the central character, Gene Forrester, on himself. In fact, there is a little bit of Knowles in all the characters. The author says: It is true that I put part of myself into all four main characters in A Separate Peace: Phineas, Gene, Leper, and Brinker. In addition to using [Gore Vidal] for Brinker, and myself for Gene, I had to, as most novelists do, draw from myself for everyone in the book. As summer turns into fall, the characters expe- rience conflicts that many readers have found to be absorbing and true to life. If the conflicts seem real, it is because they represent the kinds of inner strug- gles that everyone experiences. Like real people, the characters discover that the most challenging battles in life are often the battles within. THE TIME AND PLACE The central story of A Separate Peace begins less than a year after the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. Shortly after the surprise bombing, which claimed the lives of more than 2,000 U.S. soldiers, the United States entered World War II. During the 1930s, when international con- flicts began to erupt in Asia, most Americans did not want the United States to become involved in conflicts overseas. As other conflicts erupted and spread, many Americans sympathized with the plight of longtime allies, and their fight against Nazi Germany. However, recalling the pain and horror of World War I, most Americans still Introducing the Novel Copyright © by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. A Separate Peace Study Guide 11 wanted the United States to remain neutral. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, the opin- ion of the American public almost immediately shifted to favor U.S. involvement, and the people quickly readied themselves for war. In 1940, when the U.S. government insti- tuted the first peacetime draft in the nation’s his- tory, all men aged twenty-one through thirty-five were required to register for military service. After the United States entered the war, the registra- tion age was lowered to eighteen. Many young men did not wait to be drafted; patriotism was at an all-time high, and teenagers often felt that it was their duty to enlist. The war brought changes to the American economy and lifestyle. The militay needed weapons, and this need created jobs. The American people did all they could to aid the country. They attended rallies, bought war bonds, conserved fuel and rubber by car pooling, and planted “victory gardens” to sup- plement the sometimes meager supply of uploads/Geographie/ separate-peace-study-guide.pdf