Somewhere Today: A Book Of Peace

Through the entire book Being Peace includes illustrations from Mayumi Oda. According to the editor’s preface they talked about how Mayumi Oda met Thich Nhat Hanh at a place called Green Gulch. After doing a small research of the location on Green Gulch it is a Zen center in San Francisco. So the illustrator Mayumi Oda would have most likely taken a retreat there to meet Thich Nhat Hanh. When one notices the illustrations in the book they are very simplistic and reflect on chapter of the book Thich Nhat Hanh is talking about. For example the illustration for chapter four has a small tree that is being watered and a shovel on the ground beside it. This let us know before reading the chapter that it will have something to do with growing. Then

Charles Oduro Mrs. Weber English 9 Honors, Period 1 October. 18. 2017 A Separate Peace - Chapter 9 Summary:

Being “envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide”. John Knowles wrote A Separate Peace, based on the German term bildungsroman. Gene is smart, intelligent, and a really great person to be around. He has a great personality up until, he starts to emulate Finny. A Separate Peace demonstrates how Gene’s envy and imitation of Finny affect him, their friendship, and Gene ends up finding peace.

Chapter four starts with the gray dawn and closes with a gray dusk. Also, it begins with Gene describing Finny coming to life as Lazarus and ends with the tragic fall that destroys his life. Finny wakes that morning with characteristic action, proposing a quick swim. But of couse Gene declines because he is thinking about his limits and rules. When he looked at the sun, he knew it was about 6:30, and all he could do was worry about his trigonometry test that would be at 10:00. For Gene, the meaning of the morning emerges not from the beauty of the dawn the beautiful beach, but from his worries and disappointments. Finny has lost their money, and they must now bicycle back to Devon without breakfast and arrive just in time for Gene to fail his

cold blast for the enemy. The winter lives to destroy the warmth of the summer

A Separate Peace, chapter three starts of with Gene talking about how Finny saved his life when he fell out of the tree. On the other hand, the only reason Gene was in that tree to begin with was because of Finny, “I didn’t need to feel any tremendous rush of gratitude towards Phineas”(Knowles 33). If it were not for Finny there is no way Gene would be anywhere near that tree. Also, if Gene was not so worried about pleasing Finny all of the time, he would not have jumped from the tree in the first place. After all of this happens and as the club now starts to grow, Finny decides he needs to start recruiting other members for the Suicide Society.

People are colliding into battles continuously around the globe. It's not always a physical brawl between two armed forces but it also occur mentally and emotionally. On page 139 of A Separate Peace, a quote was mentioned by Gene, "...because it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and theirs special stupidities but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart..." This quote can relate to the novel, a personal experience and another literary work.

A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles in 1959, takes place at a boarding school in New England named Devon where 16-year-old Gene and Phineas live their adolescence. Their teenage years are taking place during World War 2, so their youth is spent talking about and waiting to go into war. While they are Devon, it seems the boys can not be attacked by the outside world and they can remain to be children. But soon the fun comes to an end when Phineas falls out of the tree. The tree that Gene and Phineas jumped out of every night, that Gene could even recognize when he came back 15 years later. This time between his fall and the war draft is a time for each boy to face his internal and external enemies. Their enemies are finally defeated after

Literary allegories correlate an author’s body of work to a greater known archetype, usually in pursuit of connecting certain ethics to the reader. A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles, is an admirable example of this approach. Knowles applies tales from the biblical book of Genesis into his narrative of two friends attending an elite preparatory school. More specifically, the stories of Cain and Abel, plus Adam and Eve, are in reference. The lessons and morals that are being displayed within these stories are present alongside situational elements undergone by the main characters, Gene and Finny.

In the story called A Separate Peace by John Knowles, a boy called Gene caused the accident of his best friend because of jealousy. Later in the story, Gene starts to feel guilt because he made the life of his friend complicated. Is friend called Phineas, isn’t able to enjoy things that he likes because his best friend caused the fracture of his leg, but he doesn’t know that he isn’t able to enjoy the things that he likes because of Gene. Later in the story, Gene tells Finny that what happened to him is his Gene’s fault. Finny doesn’t blame his friend, and forgives him, but later in the story, he fell down the stairs were him and all of his friends were being interrogated by Brinker to find out if Gene was guilty of what happened to Finny.

Crafted by author John Knowles in the late 1950’s, A Separate Peace is a heart-wrenching Bildungsroman narrated by a pensive Gene Forrester as he reflects upon trials and tribulations at his alma-mater, the Devon Boarding School. In an attempt to process the tragic loss of his best friend and coping with his own responsibility in his friend’s death, Gene returns to the campus to confront his progressive loss of Finny in both his plummet from the tree by the river to his tumble down the marble staircase. At a glance, Finny and Gene’s relationship appears to be a story of tragedy as Gene must forever carry the loss of his very best friend, but as the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Gene and Finny’s relationship before Finny’s accident was far from being black-and-white. Diving deeper into the text, Gene reveals his true feelings about Finny that fluctuate from Finny being an object of obsession to being a source of resentment. As the story is told from Gene’s point of view, the reader is submerged into the realm of Gene’s odd fascinations with Finny and the manifestations of his feelings of hatred and idolization as he acts out in odd ways, such as mimicking Finny’s facial expressions and clothing and developing conspiracy theories in which Finny is planning Gene’s academic downfall. Gradually, the picture painted of the teenage Gene Forrester of A Separate Peace becomes more and more distorted as Gene’s sanity is called into question. His

In John Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace, it begins with the protagonist, Gene Forrester coming back to his alma mater the Devon School in New Hampshire. Wandering through the campus, Gene makes his way to a tall tree by the river; the reason for his return. From here he takes the reader back to the year 1942 during World War II when he was in high school. During the summer session ofthat year, he becomes close friends with his daredevil roommate Finny who is able to convince Gene into making a dangerous jump out of a tree into a river, and the two start a secret society based on this ritual. Gene slowly begins to envy Finny’s athletic capabilities and his innocence, and he thinks that Finny envies him in return. Gene finally realizes that

"Your surroundings may change but your essence and your personality pretty much stay the same" (Dewan). The setting of the novel A Separate Peace is at an all boys school located in New Hampshire. The characters and plot are finely woven into the fabric of this institution. However, would events in this novel turn out differently if the story was set in a public high school, with a diverse environment? The characters and plot of A Separate Peace are not solely driven by their surroundings because the boys would still break the rules, Gene would have internal conflicts, and the war would affect the students.

War is a destructive force whose nature is to destroy all things and change lives forever. It is a whirlpool that sucks everything in and is fueled by hatred and violence. Whether one is directly involved in the battlefield or waiting to see the outcome, war has the capacity to affect all people. It can harden one beyond their years and force them to grow, seeing conflicting sides of good and evil. A Separate Peace by John Knowles narrates the story of young boys growing up with World War II as the backdrop. The war impacts them dramatically and is constantly thought about as they are coming of the age since they will soon be enlisted. However, not only are they living during an era of war but are also struggling with the war inside of themselves as they search for the truth within. Knowles depicts the ability of war to affect teenage boys in Devon, an English preparatory school, and transform them from carefree boys to troubled young men in search of their own separate peace.

In the novel A Separate Peace, the tree is the primary symbol used to describe the hardships, adventure, and danger of the lives of the characters. While the tree is not the only symbol used by Knowles, it is the one that Gene spends most of his time reflecting on. To Gene, the tree is “tremendous” and “a steely black steeple.” But for Finny, the tree symbolizes his downfall and eventually his death. By the end of the novel, the tree has lost its significance to Gene and has become smaller and less realistic. Another big symbol in the novel is the war. World War II was of no real meaning to Gene and his classmates when they were juniors because that is all that they did was play war. But by the time their senior year had begun, the war was real and the draft was coming for them. For Finny in particular, the war symbolized his destiny as a hero because he wanted nothing more than to be an athlete and a warrior. Another primary symbol used by Knowles is the separation between the summer and winter sessions at Devon because while the summer session was filled with laid back and innocent fun, the winter session was a dark time with preparation for war. And, the last symbol recognized is the fall of Finny from the tree on the riverbank. This fall not only symbolizes the end of childly innocent times and the beginning of war filled adulthood, but it also symbolizes the eventual death of Finny. In all, the presence