A Separate Peace (Cliffs Notes)

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Summary: What i thought about "A Seperate Peace"
Review: I read " A Separate Peace" as a required reading book over the summer. I wasn't particularly thrilled about summer reading and this didn't sound like it would be the most exciting book ever, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it pretty interesting, with a much deeper meaning then casually met the eye at a glance. This story took place in New England at Devon ( a private high school for boys) during World War II, and involved mainly two boys, Gene and Phineas, who were best friends. It tells of how Gene, who represents the experienced grown up, is overcome by jealousy and anger towards his friend. The jealousy that he holds within himself eats away and eventually leads him to push his friend from a tree and permanently injure him in a way that will eventually lead to his death. As Phineas is representative of the innocence we have as a child, this is very symbolic; Gene, the symbol of experience, "destroying" Phineas, the symbol of innocence.( growing up, losing our innocence) The tree is also symbolic , it is like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (The Garden of Eden). In the story it is Phineas's idea to climb the tree that has thus far been used for military training as a fun new thrill. When he decides to climb it and jump and convinces Gene to do the same, it is symbolic of taking the forbidden fruit that will lead to death and pain in the end. This is especially true for Gene who, when he "destroys" Phineas he is really destroying the innocent half of himself. He had forebodings at first when Phineas wanted him to climb the tree, but he ended up brushing them aside and in a sense, with that decision , it was the beginning of the end. I think this was a good book. It was sad in some ways but it was a meaningful and interesting story.

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Summary: War and Peace
Review: If there's a hidden meaning in this book, it is so obscure that this reader still hasn't found it. The things that this book did show me were how much the war consumed the youth and adults of the time. Boys in high school were training for the war. PE became a physical conditioning for war. Teachers and parents pushed boys not even out of school yet to join the service. It was understood that they would join the service.

Because one's entire identity and worth rested on his ability to join in the war, those that failed in the effort lost themselves. Most tragic is Phineas (a.k.a. Finny) who was a great athlete who, while horsing around, fell from a tree branch and broke his leg, leaving himself a cripple. And Leper who was a hero when he left the school to join the war, and slinked back as a topic of gossip after he cracked.

If you read this book, you see how war affected different people and the tragedy of young boys changing the course of their lives for a war, something so much larger than them. There's jealousy, suspicion, paranoia, and numb acceptance. A decent read, though seemingly aimless at times. Never boring, however.

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Summary: The loss of innocense - the dawn of war
Review: John Knowles captures the loss of innocense in his "A Separate Peace." Set on the eve of a larger conflict overseas in World War II, the book is a stream of consciousness writing, as the narrator reflects after the war the incidents at Devon that were a sort of rites of passage for him into adulthood.

But 'A Separate Peace' also reveals the deep twists of an unusual friendship between a scholar and an athlete. Their bond and the betrayal that follows. It is a moving drama on a human scale, the climax and conclusion being most unexpected, but reminicent of the tragedy of war, not the resoluution of Peace.

For looking at the youth that will fight the war, rather than the war itself, the author details the peace found between friends that will have to recreated on the battlefield. An agonizing book, it will live in your heart long after you have read the last page.