Romanticism in A Separate Peace
Romanticism is a faith in imagination or fantasy rather than faith in reason. In John Knowles’s novel A Separate Peace, romanticism is portrayed through the recurring idea of fantasy and unreality. The theme is displayed through the emphasis on melancholy and sadness when Gene’s happiness is vanishing, Gene’s intuition and reliance on natural feelings when he bounces the branch and causes Finny’s accident, and through Finny’s reliance on his imagination and emotion rather than formal rules. First, Gene’s happiness is vanishing to be replaced by war as the war changes familiar sights and environments. Gene is looking across the Far Commons to see the landscape rapidly transforming in front of him. He saw what was once the welcoming school becoming nothing more than a war training zone with “huge green barrels placed at many strategic points (pg. 191)” While Gene admits that he was “often happy at Devon, it seemed to [him] that afternoon were over now...to be replaced by wartime synthetic.” The change of setting is displayed through the visual and sudden change of landscape and represents the idea that during wartime, nothing stays the same. Next, romanticism is displayed through Gene’s descriptions of the setting in Devon, using metaphors and imagery to emphasize the supernatural, mystical, and exotic. In Gene’s description of the stadium, he uses a metaphor of the Aztec ruin to represent the alien and unknown. After Phineas dies, Gene feels like a part of him is missing and begins to see everything that was once familiar to him change and become foreign. The once familiar school becomes “as powerful and alien to [him] as an Aztec ruin, filled with...supreme emotions and supreme tragedies(177).” By using this aspect of romanticism, Knowles is able to create a completely different atmosphere than when Finny was alive, which shows how much Finny’s death affected the entirety of Devon, especially Gene’s emotions and perspective on life. When Gene goes to visit