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  • The novel A Separate Peace is set in 1942, shortly after the US entered World War II.

  • The main character is Gene Forrester, a shy, yet bright student attending the Devon School.

  • His roommate Finny is a charming and naughty boy who excels at sports.

  • Although the two boys couldn’t be more different, they end up becoming best friends.

  • Eventually, Gene becomes envious of Finny’s athletic prowess, and he assumes that Finny is also jealous of his academic success.

  • One day, while the boys are climbing trees, Finny reveals his sincere hope of seeing Gene achieve success in life.

  • Gene realizes that Finny has no ill feelings toward him at all.

  • He is so shocked by this revelation that he shakes the tree branch, as Finny is about to jump.

  • Finny suffers a terrible fall and shatters his leg, ending his sporting days.

  • Although most people, including Finny, assume it was an accident, Gene feels incredible guilt.

  • The next semester, Finny expresses his desire to make Gene a sports star and starts training him.

  • They dream that one day Gene can compete in the Olympics with Finny as his coach.

  • A boy named Brinker becomes suspicious that Gene intentionally caused Finny’s accident.

  • So he arranges a group of schoolboys to be the judge and jury.

  • Finny refuses to participate and rushes out of the room.

  • While leaving, he falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his leg again.

  • There are complications when the doctor operates on him and Finny dies.

  • At the end of the novel, Gene reflects on how special and pure at heart Finny truly was.

  • The author of A Separate Peace, John Knowles, was born in West Virginia, USA in 1926.

  • His father was a vice-president of a coal company, which provided their family with a comfortable life.

  • Like the characters in Knowles’s most famous novel, he too attended an elite boarding school in New Hampshire.

  • Following his graduation, Knowles served for a short while as a cadet in the US Air Force before attaining his bachelor’s degree at Yale University.

  • Afterwards, Knowles spent much of the next decade traveling through Europe and making ends meet as a freelance writer and journalist.

  • Afterwards, Knowles spent much of the next decade traveling through Europe and making ends meet as a freelance writer and journalist.

  • Afterwards, Knowles spent much of the next decade traveling through Europe and making ends meet as a freelance writer and journalist.

  • In 1959, he published his debut novel, A Separate Peace.

  • The book drew upon Knowles’s own life experiences at boarding school.

  • In fact, several of the novel’s characters were based upon his boyhood friends.

  • In later interviews, Knowles made it clear that his childhood school years were not as dismal as the ones portrayed in the book.

  • On the contrary, he recalls his youth as a rather joyous time in his life.

  • Upon its release, A Separate Peace became an immediate commercial and critical success, which provided Knowles with enough income to become a full-time novelist.

  • Although he released several other novels during his career, none approached the popularity of his debut.

  • Knowles passed away in 2001 at the age of 75, but his famous coming-of-age novel, A Separate Peace, continues to capture the interest of young readers to this day.

  • The main theme in A Separate Peace is war.

  • Yet it is not the combat that occurs on the battlefield that is in focus.

  • Instead, Knowles deals with the inner war that people wage inside of their hearts.

  • A prime example of this is the jealousy that Gene develops towards Finny.

  • In the book, Gene states that he fought his own war at school and defeated his enemy.

  • This can be interpreted in two ways.

  • One is that he triumphed over Finny.

  • This statement could also refer to Gene overcoming his own evil nature which caused him to push Finny from the tree.

  • Finny’s fall is also symbolic of the ending of the boysinnocence.

  • Before the incident, Gene and Finny are just naive children.

  • After the accident, they come to know that the world can be a hostile place and they must remain vigilant and protect themselves from danger.

  • Gene also learns that his actions can come back to haunt him, as he feels great guilt and sorrow for causing Finny’s injury.

  • Finally, the book also deals with the idea of codependency.

  • After Finny’s injury, he is forced to live out his dreams through Gene.

  • In return, Gene seems to depend on Finny for psychological support in light of his guilt.

  • Until Finny’s untimely death, the two boysidentities were so closely linked that it’s almost impossible to imagine them apart.

  • However, after Finny’s passing, Gene seems to accept that he will have to put everything behind him and establish his own identity.

The novel A Separate Peace is set in 1942, shortly after the US entered World War II.

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    劉老 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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