WILL UNWOUND #278: “Will’s Mystery Project – ‘A Separate Peace’ by John Knowles”
November 13, 2010In my retirement years, I’ve developed a personal reading project that has been surprisingly fascinating. I’ve been re-reading books that I first read in high school (Pitman High ’67)…no not just any books but the books that were supposed to be foundational to the liberal arts education that I would be receiving in college.
I’m talking about The Catcher in the Rye, The Lord of the Flies, Death Be Not Proud, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Separate Peace. What I have discovered is that only A Separate Peace still resonates with me. The other four titles to varying degrees are much less immediate to my life…past, present, and future. A Separate Peace, however, still speaks to me in a very direct and meaningful way.
You all know the story. It’s about a tight group of smart but scared prep school students during the middle years of World War II. The main character, Phineas, is an unforgettable amalgamation of charisma, courage, creativity, and contrariness. He dominates the boy he rooms with, Gene, and in a very ambiguous moment of revenge, Gene causes (well maybe and maybe not) an accident that cripples Phineas and eventually leads to his death.
It’s a haunting mystery. On the surface Gene is an All American boy …bright, polite, sensitive, and very smart. Certainly he is not a character in whom we would be hunting for a heart of darkness. But the reality remains we are just not sure about Gene’s intentions. The other boys in their dormitory sense this moral ambiguity about Gene and create a solemn late night tribunal to get at the truth. It’s an overpowering scene. Is Gene guilty of murder? Well, reader, you decide. That’s the brilliant challenge that author John Knowles presents. Good luck with that challenge. It’s still roiling around in my head.
That’s the first thing that I re-discovered about A Separate Peace. On one level it is a gripping murder mystery. All the ponderables are there: a compelling victim, a fascinating suspect, and a penetrating motive. But what really speaks to me is the setting. All unforgettable mysteries have an overpowering setting. Devon Prep School in the middle of World War II creates an intensity of mood that reverberates with an odd mosaic of religion, patriotism, violence, and fear.
The Devon boys are on the verge of leaving the highly elevated spiritual liturgies and academic rituals of their prestigious academy for the blood and guts of war. The resulting tensions manifest themselves in paranoia, psychosis, and could it be….murder?
I give A Separate Peace a 5 star salute!
A hole in my reading that will be remedied.
Enjoy…this book is a masterpiece. He holds up very well over time.
Thanks for the reminder. I first read ASP in a young adult lit class! It blew me away then and I am ready to be blown away again!
Wynette, if sounds like in library school you might have gone through some of the same reading lists I did. As I have been reading through the books on those lists most of them simply don’t resonate. But, boy, this one really packed a punch.
I’ll check it out tomorrow. I don’t know why we weren’t assigned A Separate Peace instead of Waiting for Godot…I think my high school Independent Reading teacher was a sadist. We did all go on a class trip to see the play (Waiting..) in Boston, though. That proves it, he hated us.
Leigh, waiting for Godot is the most pretentious piece of drivel ever foisted upon young minds.
You had to read Waiting for Godot in high school? Was that a teacher just hoping to make non-readers out of students?
I hadn’t thought about ASP in decades. I remember it left me feeling very sad, but the details were pretty much gone until you outlined the plot. I’ll have to pick it up again.
Don’t you think that an awful lot of the books we were required to read in high school are books which are really beyond the capacity of a teen to fully understand? I just re-read Emerson’s Divinity School Address. How they ever expected a room full of 17 year olds to understand, much less appreciate, the work is beyond me. It’s a difficult age – to old for kiddie books, too inexperienced to fully comprehend some of the great works of literature. It does turn a lot of teens off to reading. I, personally, was scarred by being forced to read A Tale of Two Cities in the 9th grade. Have not been able to bring myself to pick it up since, though I did re-discover Dickens in college, staying up all night to read Bleak House – now that’s a BOOK! – and moving on to his other works. However, I really enjoyed Cloris Leachman doing a Madame DeFarge in Mel Brook’s History of the World Part 1! So all was not lost…
Leslie…you have touched a subject near and dear to my heart. There is an old expression that “youth is wasted on the young.” My corollary to that is that the classics are wasted on the young. They simply do not have the necessary life experiences to understand and appreciate the moral dilemmas posed in the great works. A Separate Peace was an exception for my cohort because of the looming presence of VietNam.
I hated reading The Scarlet Letter in high school then 13 years later when I went back to college to earn teaching certification I had to read it for a class and thought then it was one of the greatest novels ever. Of course, that was 30 years ago, so I’m going to reread it, and, thanks to Will, will read A Separate Peace.
Jim…we are in agreeance. Hawthorne got American religiosity correct in SL.
Somehow I missed A Separate Peace in my growing up years, so I’ve added it to my reading list. I moved to the South after retiring and read To Kill A Mockingbird again shortly thereafter–it still resonates here.
Jean…as a Northern boy I did struggle with understanding the peculiarities of the pre Civil rights era South. I still have trouble understanding all the subleties of segregationist Southern culture, and why that culture was embraced by so many white people. I guess it all seemed like a foreign country to me that I didn’t and still don’t understand.
I love this dicussion! I’ve often thought about going back and re-reading (or reading for the first time) some of those books. I’ve never read A Separate Peace; I guess our teacher was too busy foisting Moby Dick on us.
It sounds like ASP remains relevant to the current national discussion on bullying…
Mimi…foisting MD on young people is just the literary equivalent of abusive behavior. You are perceptive…ASP takes on the whole concept of bullying in a very real way. You have to understand the tensions and rivalries of the all male school. Knowles captures the environment is a very intense way.
When we left high school in 1971, we were handed a list of books that should be read before going to college. Very few of them were read in school. (I think we read primarily from anthologies. Jr. year was all vocabulary and writing a short research paper.) Why did they wait until graduation to hand us that list? I’m still working on catching up!
Never was a fan of A Separate Peace, but maybe I’ll give it another chance down the road.
Out of curiosity, have you read The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Will?? If you haven’t, I suggest you read it soon. Like maybe tomorrow.