Anne Hiebert Alton. "A Separate Peace: A Separate Piece: An overview." Novels for Students.
Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 15 May
2011. <http://www.enotes.com/a-separate-peace/separate-piece-an-overview>.
A Separate Piece: An overview
A comprehensive essay exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the novel, as
well as a summary of the literary traditions the novel falls under. Anne Hiebert
Alton
Alton is a member of an honorary research association at the University
of Sydney, Australia. In the following essay, she places A Separate Peace within
three distinct literary traditions and examines the novel's strengths and
weaknesses.
John Knowles based his first novel, A Separate Peace (1959), on two short
stories, entitled "Phineas" and "A Turn in the Sun." An immediate success, it won
the William Faulkner Foundation Award, the Rosenthal Award of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, and an award from the Independent School
Education Board. Adapted into both a stage play and a film, the novel has been
praised for its "clear craftsmanship and careful handling of form" by Jay Halio in
Studies in Short Fiction. It has also been hailed for its exceptional power and
distinction. In addition to exploring the pathos of a complicated friendship, the
novel provides insights into the human psyche and the heart of man.
A Separate Peace emulates three major literary traditions. First, it focuses on the
fall of man, something central in such works as the Bible's Book of Genesis,
Paradise Lost, and Lord of the Flies. The novel can be read as Gene's movement
from innocence to experience, as he progresses from his ignorance of humanity's
tendency towards thoughtless yet harmful actions to recognizing his own
potential for such acts. More significantly, the novel chronicles Phineas'
progression from his initial belief in the world's benevolence and in his own
integrity—defined by a rigid set of rules such as winning at sports, never lying
about one's height, saying prayers just in case God exists, and never blaming a
friend without cause—to his final realization of Gene's role in the accident.
Second, the novel is a bildungsroman, a German term meaning "novel of
formation." This tradition includes such literary masterpieces as The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, David Copperfield, and Little Women. The bildungsroman
focuses on the development of the protagonist's mind and character from
childhood to adulthood, charting the crises which lead to maturation and
recognition of one's identity and place in the world. A Separate Peace follows
Gene Forrester's progress through the formative years of his adolescence, and
specifically his relationship with Phineas. Gene—short for Eugene—is Greek for
"well-born." While Gene is from a Southern family affluent enough to send him to
prep school, his identity isn't as secure as his name suggests: before the
accident, he implies the posters on his wall of a large Southern estate represent
his home. Initially Gene emulates Phineas: he joins him in climbing the tree and
jumping into the river, being late for dinner, and taking a forbidden trip to the
beach. Later, he wants to become Phineas, as when he tries on his clothes and
feels confident "that I would never stumble through the confusions of my own
character again." Phineas, too, feels their connection: after the accident, he
informs Gene that he must become an athlete in Finny's stead. Later, Gene
realizes that his "aid alone had never seemed to him in the category of help ....
Phineas had thought of me as an extension of himself." However, as Gene
matures he starts to develop his own identity. He recognizes his attraction to
deadly things and, more significantly, he writes a narrative about his relationship
with Phineas revealing the flaws in his own character which led to Phineas's
death.
Third, A Separate Peace is a boys' school story, a tradition which includes such
books as Tom Brown's Schooldays, Stalky and Co., Goodbye Mr. Chips, and even
Dead Poets Society. It is set in what John Rowe Townsend in Written for Children
refers to as the "hothouse environment" of boarding school, a self-contained
world with an aura of privilege based on class and money. Typically, such a
school is a place for education and growth. Here it also represents the last place
of freedom and safety for the boys, guarding their last days of childhood and
standing as "the tame fringe of the last and greatest wilderness," adulthood.
Moreover, it functions as a microcosm of the real world, dealing with issues of
leadership, discipline, rivalry, and friendship. The novel diverges from this
tradition in one respect: while pre-World War I school stories focused on what
Townsend maintains were "'Games to play out, whether earnest or fun'—it was
magnificent but it was not war; it had nothing to do with life and death in the
trenches," A Separate Peace has everything to do with it.
Gene fights his private war at school, and his actions and their effects echo the
world's large-scale war. When he leaves Devon School, he feels ready to enter
this war, for he no longer has any enmity to contribute Indeed, Gene comments
that he never killed anyone, nor did he develop an intense hatred for the enemy,
"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." In the end, Gene realizes that his
real enemy is himself and his impulse towards mindless destruction—and he
believes he overcame this enemy only after causing Phineas's death.
One of the novel's strengths lies in its structure, and particularly its treatment of
time. The narrative is designed as a story within a story, with the outer layer
occurring on a dark November day. In contrast, the inner layer follows a
progression through the seasons, beginning and ending in June. This cycle
implies the notion of life going on despite everything, while the seasons' passing,
along with the bleak winter's day at the beginning, suggest time's inevitable
passage. The narrative is exceptionally good where time becomes broken into
pieces on the day of Phineas' operation and death: Gene's movements at 10:10,
11:00, 11:10, 12:00, 2:30, and 4:45 are like heartbeats, which stop with
Phineas's heart.
Another of the novel's strengths is Knowles' remarkable economy of language.
The key to many of the minor characters appears in a single phrase: Elwin
"Leper" Lepellier is "the person who was most often and most emphatically taken
by surprise," while Brinker Hadley cannot, "for all his self-sufficiency ... do much
without company." Significant events occur almost as briefly, such as when Gene
reads Leper's cryptic telegram and faces "in advance whatever the destruction
was. That was what I learned to do that winter." Leper's description of Gene and
Phineas on the tree limb is meticulous and evocative: "The one holding on to the
trunk sank for a second, up and down like a piston, and then the other one sank
and fell." The last sentence of the novel, where Gene acknowledges the truth of
humanity's inherent evil, is just as precise: "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."
Knowles is a master of characterization, which we see best in his creation of
Phineas who, as the epitome of careless grace, resembles the figurehead of a
ship. Like Beowulf, Tarzan, and Hercules, Phineas has no last name; he is only
Phineas. The name, which means "oracle" in Hebrew, has three-fold Biblical
significance Phinehas, son of Aaron, was a judge and priest: Phineas constantly
judges Gene, but always with complete integrity, and in the end offers him
forgiveness. Phinehas, son of Eli, was a rebellious youth who redeemed himself
by protecting the Ark: while Phineas too is rebellious, he redeems himself by
embodying the essence of boyhood before the war, in his love of sport for its own
sake—he breaks the swimming record simply for the challenge—and in his
indefatigability, always displaying "a steady and formidable flow of usable
energy." Finally, Phineas the angel was the youngest of the seventy-two angels
of the Lord: like these traditional bearers of peace, Phineas is unfit for war
because of his fundamental idealism. As Gene comments, once Phineas became
bored with the war he'd be making friends with the enemy, chatting, and
generally getting things "so scrambled up nobody would know who to fight any
more." His major role is as catalyst for Gene's developing personality. By
presenting Gene with his utter uniqueness, Phineas forces him to grapple with
questions of identity and to confront the unrealized depths of his own character.
Despite its many strengths, A Separate Peace contains a few flaws. Its detailed
descriptions of setting are rarely well-integrated into the narrative. In addition,
many of the minor characters (with the exception of Leper and Brinker) are
poorly developed: Mr. Prud'homme appears as a foolish cipher, and the few
women in the novel—such as the faculty wives, Leper's mother, or Hazel
Brewster, the town belle—are mere stock characters. Furthermore, Knowles'
symbolism falls short of its potential. While Gene implies that the tree holds great
significance for him as something which is no longer intimidating or unique but to
which he is still drawn, he goes no further with his speculations. However, this
lack of development was intentional: as Knowles comments in his "The Young
Writer's Real Friends," "If anything appeared which looked suspiciously like a
symbol, I left it on its own .... I know that if I began with symbols, I would end
with nothing; if I began with certain individuals I might end up by creating
symbols." Finally, Gene's vantage point from fifteen years later is problematic, for
it raises questions about the unreliability of his narrative and creates a
disquieting sense of vagueness. We see Phineas only as Gene remembers him,
thus Phineas is a construction of Gene's memory. In addition, Gene's refusal to
pursue the question of whether or not he's truly changed is disturbing: while he
insists he's improved since his days at school, noting his achievements of security
and peace after having survived the war and gained worldly success, his tone
suggests a lack of conviction. Moreover, though he implies that he's imbued
some of Phineas' vitality, this doesn't appear in his narrative, and we're left to
wonder whether he's really grown.
Nevertheless, Gene's narrative provides us with one valuable insight into the
effects of humanity's unthinking tendencies. After the second accident, Phineas
comments to Gene: "It was just some kind of blind impulse you had in the tree
there .... It wasn't anything you really felt against me, it wasn't some kind of
hate you've felt all along. It wasn't anything personal."
Here, Knowles makes the point that it's exactly this sort of impulsive and
impersonal action which causes war, death, and conflict in the world—and it
happens constantly and repeatedly. Gene supports this notion, realizing that
"wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars
were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart." This is what
happened between him and Phineas, and what he believes happened to bring the
world to war.
The real meaning of A Separate Peace lies in its title. Phineas' imaginary worlds
create a peace separate from the world at war, and he invites others—and
especially Gene—into this peaceful sphere. As the champion of Phineas' world,
Gene delights in "this liberation we had torn from the gray encroachments of
1943, the escape we had concocted, this afternoon of momentary, illusory,
special and separate peace." In the end, however, Gene arrives at his real
peace—if he indeed does— apart from Phineas. Though he says that Finny's life
and death taught him a way of living—"an atmosphere in which I continued now
to live, a way of sizing up the world with erratic and entirely personal
reservations"—he reaches this atmosphere only after separating himself from
Phineas and finding his own identity. This process is ongoing, and entails Gene's
acknowledgement that the real enemy is within himself and, indeed, within each
of us: we're all liable to corruption from within by our own envy, anger, and fear.
In the end, inner peace is achieved only after fighting one's own, private war of
growing up. In this sense, the war is symbolic also of the inner struggle from
adolescence to maturity.