Rating: 
Summary: A Separate Peace. Separate from what?
Review: John Knowles has managed to write almost 200 flowery, descriptive pages, without ever creating anything resembling a plot. One gets so caught up in the description of trees and whatnot, that one fails to see the big picture. While his descriptions help the reader see clearly the setting of the novel, I have found that while caught up in this jumble of adjectives I cannot grasp what is supposed to be happening at the moment. Mr. Knowles utilizes the method of introducing a character through his actions and appearance, which, while creative and interesting, is at the same time tedious and confusing. For example, the reader does not learn exactly what gender the main character is until around page 10. Overall, what I got out of this story was that Gene thinks that Phineas is his rival and pushes him out of a tree, only to learn that he is not his rival after all. However, Phineas is now crippled for life and can no longer play sports. One of their friends enlists in the army, and as a result, goes psycho. Gene also slowly loses his mental stability as time goes on. Then, suddenly, Phineas dies. The explanation given: while setting his leg some marrow must have escaped and stopped his heart. Gene doesn't really appear to care that his best friend is dead. Then there are some more descriptions that have nothing to do with what is going on. On the whole, I think each page is really only worth one sentence, and it would certainly be easier to understand if the author had written it that way. I would like to end this by saying that I would never have read this book, if it were not for our high school teachers forcing us to. Now that I have read it, I do not find that it has enriched my life in any way, or that I have benefited at all from this novel.
Rating: 
Summary: The American War and Peace --- and much shorter!
Review: This classic of prep school angst and identity reads well again many years post-adolescence. Certainly, the familiar tale of two boys vying for self-realization against the early 1940s mists of war, set in Knowles' lovely New England neurotica prose, is timeless and appeals not only to the nerdy intellectuals of the under-twenties, but to much older world weary, but still looking for hope crowd. There's so much going on here, well beyond Finny's quirky clinging to his own fantasies of war. The relationship between Finny and Gene definitely merits an even closer reading and the litcrit crew really have not begun to delve the deeper meaning of Knowles' masterpiece. This may be the great American novel of the 20th century; it's surely a candidate.
Rating: 
Summary: Sad, but good
Review: A pretty depressing novel but a good one and friendship is displayed nicely by Knowles. If you like stories with good friendships and compelling drama, I suggest you read A Separate Peace. It's nicely moving and a timeless classic!
Rating:
Summary: A blight. YOU can do better.
Review: This is the one book I've read that made me want to vomit. The relationships are superficial to the extreme, the dialogue laughable, and the emotional content so overwritten that it can make one sick. This is insanely overrated, written in a condescending fashion for poor, impressionable Junior High students. Knowles dresses up his preschool sentiments with flowery language so that he may appear an "artist," but he is infinitely shallow. And I have never found any reason to believe that gene would have pushed Phinney out of the tree. The idea is a ludicrous fabrication of the public conscience. The senseless conclusion gives "deus ex machina" a bad name, but it's negative, and negative stories are always better received artistically. (Ulp! This is a negative review!)
In Stephen King's On Writing, he says that there will be a point in anyone's life where they will read something and conclude that they can do better, a source of artistic inspiration. I reccommend this to to anyone looking for such a book; you CAN write better. I know I'm trying.
Many of you have heard this trashed on "The Simpsons." They were right. "The Simpsons" is much more intelligent than this.
Beware the movie. It makes the book look good. Almost. (Although I could swear to God that Matt Damon is in it!)
Rating:
Summary: Complicated, Beautiful and Compelling
Review: I am having a very unusual response to "A Separate Peace" (1959) by John Knowles. There are alot of different aspects of the novel to which I am responding in different ways. Overall, I am glad I read it though I'd like to understand it a bit better.
The best thing about the novel, without doubt, is the character of Phineas. I realized at the end that Phineas is the moral exemplar for Knowles. This novel is set against the backdrop of World War II and Knowles has ideas about the causes of wars of this kind. It is caused by human nature or by certain choices that humans make or certain kinds of character traits. But if we were all like Phineas, there would be no wars. Towards the end, Gene, the novel is from his perspective, says to Phineas, "Phineas, you wouldn't be any good in the war, even if nothing had happened to your leg..... there'd be a lull in the fighting, and the next thing anyone knew you'd be over with the Germans or the Japs, asking if they'd like to field a baseball team against our side...... You'd get things so scrambled up nobody would know who to fight anymore" (pg 182). In this context, one begins to understand Phineas's love of sports. This is the kind of competition that a spirit of his kind finds its true expression in. Phineas has no hatred, no desire to destroy and hurt other people, no envy. He is simply free and serenely happy founded on "an extra vigor, a heightened confidence in himself, a serene capacity for affection which saved him" (pgs 194-5). In sum, Phineas is a beautiful and moral character and the kind of man who could in no way play a part in starting a war.
A crucially interesting question is why Gene pushed Phineas off the tree. He tells Phineas, "It was just some ignorance insde me, some crazy thing inside me, something blind, that's all it was" (pg 183). It is this thing within men that causes wars, as I interpret Knowles. And he writes, "Because it seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart" (pg 193). So there is something "ignorant" and "blind" in Gene, in man, that causes these kinds of destructive acts; but none of that was in Phineas.
One thing that I truly loved is that by the end Gene has learned from Phineas. He has out grown that blind ignorance, that hatred within him, and become "Phineas-filled" (pg 196)(an interesting choice of terms no doubt). As for Gene, "in fact I could feel now the gathering, glowing sense of sureness in the face of it. I was ready for the war, now that I no longer had any hatred to contribute to it.... Phineas had absorbed it and taken it with him, and I was rid of it forever" (pg 195). And then, "Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform; I was on active duty all my time at school; I killed my enemy there" (pg 196). The enemy was not Phineas, as it felt to Gene at the beginning, but something in him, envy perhaps, jealousy, insecurity, that responded with hatred and a desire for destruction towards Phineas. But that is all gone by the end of the novel; Gene has grown and I personally love novels of inner, personal growth.
The things I have conflicting responses to in this novel are twofold. First, it is a tragedy in what happens to Phineas. Phineas is the highest kind of man and yet he is destroyed. That is always hard to deal with. But at the same time, this is illustrative of the nature of war, what war causes, and what this ignorant, blind aspect of human nature can lead to. What I am saying is that by what happens to Phineas this point is really made forcefully and I really wanted to find out what caused it so as to avoid it at all costs (because I love Finny!).
The second thing is that the interpretation and messages are not entirely straightforward. Knowles writes sentences to give you his perspective but they are not always easy to interpret. For instance, the very last sentence of the novel, "All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way - if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy" (pg 196). So, people construct these defenses, these personas to defend against an enemy. They think this enemy is out there, "across the frontier", but he isn't, he "never attacked that way". And then "if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy". What is this thing that we think is the enemy but that doesn't attack that way, or maybe doesn't attack or maybe isn't even the enemy? Is this that blind, ignorant part of human nature, somehow connected with hatred and jealousy? I think it is but I am not sure and the text is not defnitive, I don't think.
Rating:
Summary: a book most of us can relate to
Review: A Separate Peace is a book about a teenage boy and his coming-of-age, but it is also about so much more. Set against a backdrop of a boys' prep school with WW2 unfolding far away, the war and its repercussions on the boys echo the struggle within Gene. Torn with guilt at having caused Finny's injury, Gene at times tries to rationalize the accident, tries to absolve himself, but at last cannot deny the existence of the darker side of his own character.Above all, A Separate Peace is about that something blind, something crazy that is present in each of us, no matter how hard we try to believe that we are good people. We can blame Gene for Finny's accident and ultimately, his death, but we must also admit that Gene is a person like everyone else, and that in us also, we have something that we want to hide. Finny, however, seems like the perfect person: a Christ figure, if you like (Though we could wonder just how selfless he is. All those times when he proved himself better at something than the other boys, did he not feel self-gratification? Did he ever feel superior? Finny's struggle is something we will never know.). In the end his forgiveness of Gene even before Gene can forgive himself paves the way for the peace that will follow - the peace when the war ends, and the peace that Gene finds when he comes to accept who he is. John Knowles language is simple and touching, with descriptions that avoid being ornate or fanciful.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I had to read this book for school however it is the only book i am glad that they made me read. I love this book and would recommend it to anyone.
Most teenagers don't like it because they either don't gove it half a chance to begin with or they are simply not intelligent enough to grasp the books full meaning. However the book is a wonderfull peice of literature and i liked it so much i bought two other books by John Knowles.
Rating:
Summary: HELL NO
Review: I was assigned to read this book for summer reading. It was a horrible novel about a sick teenager who is both attracted to his friend and hates him to the point where his friends death was a virtual murder. I WOULD NEVER READ THIS BOOK AGAIN IF U PAID ME!
Rating:
Summary: There is no point in reading this.
Review: I had to read this book at school and it took me SO long to finish it because it was so boring. It's about a bunch of high school kids who are not realistic at all. The plot is pretty much whether or not the main character tried to kill his best friend by pushing him off a tree branch. I never really found out if he did try to kill him, which makes this a very pointless book to read... The people who love this book love it because of hidden meaning and other stuff English teachers always talk about. If you're like that you might like this book. For the rest of you, don't read this book. It's a waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful
Review: This book is about World War II and how it affected high school boys. Some people find Gene, the main character, to be too self-absorbed. To me, this shows lack of understanding. Gene was struggling to keep up with the extroverted and handsome Phineas, his best friend. As Gene struggles with his deep jealousy, he is slowly consumed by the war. In an act of resentment, Gene causes Phineas to hurt himself and be banned from sports. This was devastating to Phineas, and Gene must live with his dark secret...
|
