A Separate Peace’ by John Knowles is a coming-of-age novel of two young boys, Gene and Finny who live in a dormitory. The story is set in the backdrop of World War II and looks at the trials and tribulations of growing up. The story is narrated in flashback through its protagonist Gene. Gene goes back to Devon and remembers prominent landmarks in his dorm from several years back. He also remembers the people and events associated with them, especially his best friend and foe, Finny.…
Gene looked up to everything Finny did. Whatever Finny did, Gene felt that he needed to follow his lead and do the same thing. Finny easily convinced Gene to jump out of the tree after diving in the water.…
1) The main character of the book, A Separate Peace, is Gene Forrester. He is in the senior class at Devon. He is widely known as the smart student who is always on time to class and always does his school work. Gene is a good choice as the main character of this book, but if the author would have chosen Finny as the main character, the book would have been different. Finny leaves Devon for an amount of time because he breaks his leg. Therefore, if he was the main character, the book would not have been placed at Devon the whole time, it would have been placed at Finny's house for a short amount of time. The reader would have also been able to see what Finny was thinking when he first broke his leg and when he did it a second time. The two characters are similar, in the fact that, they both would not be where they are today without their friendship. They are also both very competitive with each other. Gene and Finny are different, in the fact that, Gene is shy while Finny is very outgoing. Finny is focused on athletics while Gene is focused on academics.…
Have you ever heard the saying “ignorance is bliss”? This applies in countless cases, but not in that of Finny, a character from John Knowles’ A Separate Peace. In this text, he, a boy enlisted in a prestigious New England school, scales a tree with his best friend, Gene. Finny, unfortunately, takes a horrendous fall resulting in him breaking his leg. Gene, over come by guilt, profusely tries to come clean about intentionally swaying the limb for the most of the remainder of the tale. However, he fails as Finny refuses to acknowledge this deed because of his ingenuous nature and his desire to see the good in the world.…
Nancy Mairs writes in her article “Trying Truth” about the struggles of writing an autobiography and dealing with issues of remembering. She says the quote “we are each the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves, and no one of us can authentically tell another’s story” when she is talking about how she and her husband have different recollections of the same event (91). This quote means that we each have our own way of understanding the things that we do and the events that occur in our life. History is made up of these various accounts and the goal of historical study is to try to find the objective truth among them. Mairs seems to view the understanding of an incident as purely subjective; that there is no objective truth.…
In the novel 'Talking In Whispers' by James Watson, it is about a teenager trying to get his own life back in a world where people are deceiving and unfair. It is an exciting and uncompromising political thriller, that voices out things about certain parts of the world dealing with human rights in an everyday crisis. In this analysis, I have analyzed several fractured narratives in the novel. Andres is the main character in the novel - and is someone that the writer wants to sympathize. Therefore, the writer used a fractured narrative so that he could create tension and sympathy in his novel.…
In a letter to his wife, Robert E. Lee said, “What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world” (Lee). This destruction can be seen in John Dante, the soldier from Cynthia Rylant’s I Had Seen Castles, and Harold Krebs, the veteran from Ernest Hemingway’s short story “Soldier’s Home.” Although John and Krebs face their suffering in different ways, these battle-scarred protagonists change in unique and similar ways. Upon returning from the war, John moves away from his home to find peace while Krebs stays home. Despite where the soldiers are geographically, both are in a new battle against their own thoughts; John and Krebs suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) forcing them to react…
Then he brings up another patient who was traumatized post war, who believed that he hadn’t killed any innocent villagers during the war. But proved to be wrong, he had in fact convicted several unnecessary kills. Again he proves that although memories are lost, they are in fact real and can be used as evidence.…
In the first paragraph alone, many important aspects of the narrator's character are revealed. It is revealed to the reader that the narrator was in love and is grieving for the woman he loved. It is also in the first paragraph where the major conflict is revealed. The major conflict, in which the narrator is involved, is his own torment from the memory of his dead wife. This is evident when the narrator says, "When I saw our room again, our bed, our furniture, everything that remains of the life of a human being after death I was seized by such a violent attack of fresh grief that I felt like opening the window and throwing myself onto the street." Initially, the author intends the reader to feel sorry for the narrator and his loss. The thing that motivates the narrator in the conflict is his resolution to finish grieving before it consumes him. This is evident when he says, "Happy is the man whose heart forgets everything that it has contained."…
“This novel demonstrates that telling the truth is not always the right thing to do.” Discuss…
Among the challenges of writing such stories is authors’ exclusive reliance on personal memories. The problem arises when conversations begin. One can hardly remember each and every sentence as spoken. Years back when veteran journalist and a one time minister Ahadou Saboure wrote his memoir, some of the criticisms revolved around the conversations…
Something happens when we as readers start to sense that there is a case of an unreliable narrator – we stop reading the story and start reading the narrator or writer. This can make the story more complicated, confusing, and ultimately thrilling, specifically in the case of the famous poet Edgar Allan Poe. In Poe’s Annabel Lee and Tell Tale Heart, he gives us reason to doubt the sanity and truthfulness of his narrators. The deeper we look into his two poems, the more complex and even psychotic our narrators reveal to be.…
All Quiet on the Western Front is—indirectly—an autobiography of Remarque. When going through traumatic events such as war and the deaths of both his best friend and his mother, novelizing his thoughts became a very therapeutic way to cope. “There is no doubt that Remarque’s books always dealt—either directly or indirectly—with subject matter that he knew from personal experience or that had at least been triggered by events affecting him personally” (Wagener…
It is a story that provides the ultimate explanation of how two different people who are witnesses to a crime give completely different psychological recollections of the same event. The author reminds us that truth depends on the telling. Someone must step forward and tell that truth.…
Today has been eye-opening in positive and negative ways. Charlie and Molly have been caught secretly sending each love letters! At least I know what the real world is like, that I can’t trust anyone with my feelings.…