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Separate Peace: The War Within (Twayne's Masterwork Studies)

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The years have been flying by for most people, but not so fast that the theme of boys and war will ever be separated from the novel A SEPARATE PEACE by John Knowles, who attended Phillips Exeter Academy in 1942 to 1944. The Twayne's Masterworks Studies book on the novel by Hallman Bell Bryant, subtitled THE WAR WITHIN, which appeared in 1990, easily identified the theme of the book as the special expectations of boys in time of war. 7,445,000 copies of the Dell-Bantam paperback were in print when this study of the novel appeared. The incidents in the novel retain their significance for many readers because the setting in World War II, with its expectation that students would go on to play some part in the great historical drama that was being played out on a world stage, already seemed strangely out of place when A SEPARATE PEACE was published in 1959.

There is an index for Hallman Bell Bryant's book on pages 126-129, mostly containing names but also mentioning "onomastics, 112-13" for the book's analysis of the names of the major characters in the novel, Gene Forrester and Finny, the fallen angel Phineas. Gore Vidal appears in the index because:

Brinker Hadley, a minor character who is the typical "big man on campus" type, was based on another classmate of Knowles's, Gore Vidal, who, Knowles recalled, was an "unusual and thriving" person as a schoolboy, although he did not know him very well. (p. 32).

Thirteen of the novel's characters are listed in the index under "minor characters in A SEPARATE PEACE." I was most interested in Elwin Lepellier, who is called Leper throughout the book, and who is on more pages than the thirteen pages given for him in the index. One of my favorite points in A SEPARATE PEACE is when Phineas said:

"And you told me about Leper, that he's gone crazy. That's the word, we might as well admit it. Leper's gone crazy. When I heard that about Leper, then I knew that the war was real, this war and all the wars. If a war can drive somebody crazy, then it's real all right."

Hallman Bell Bryant understands the nature of the game that Phineas and Gene have been playing, a `binge' of the imagination "as cohorts who lived through an intoxicating experience" (p. 99), but he might fall short of Leper's ability in the book to describe his new state of mind:

"I'm no fool, you know. I'm not going to tell you everything and then have it used against me later. You always did take me for a fool, didn't you? But I'm no fool any more. I know when I have information that might be dangerous." He was working himself up to indignation. "Why should I tell you! Just because it happens to suit you!"

"Leper," Brinker pleaded, "Leper, this is very important--"

"So am I," he replied thinly, "I'm important. You've never realized it, but I'm important too. You be the fool," he gazed shrewdly at Brinker, "you do whatever anyone wants whenever they want it. You be the fool now. Bastard."

Not nearly as successful as A SEPARATE PEACE, the novel PEACE BREAKS OUT by John Knowles was published in 1981 and is very briefly summarized in Chapter 9, Final Reflections, of this book. "The nation, having defeated all external enemies, now moves to eliminate all internal foes, real or imagined. Here the enemy is depicted as those who would corrupt the `Devon Spirit,' " (p. 116). Major characters include "A German sympathizer named Hochschwender is a blatant Nazi and racist, and his views make him the enemy of a boy named Wexford, a superpatriotic type who is intolerant of anyone with different views." (p. 117). Overly obvious is "the tendency to correlate outside historical forces and motivation of characters." (p. 118). I liked a certain toughness which the book exhibited as aftereffects of the militarization of society. Comparing it to UNFASHIONABLE OBSERVATIONS, dramatically it is similar to Nietzsche's complaints about the victorious boasts of Germans after their victory over France in the war of 1870. In a sense, war was over, but the mentality could be as deadly as ever for those inclined to dwell on what it all meant.

There are great comic moments in A SEPARATE PEACE which are not totally captured by Hallman Bell Bryant, but his analysis comes very close to showing how great literature comes about. A Hollywood movie version of `A SEPARATE PEACE' from 1972 appears in this book where a change of the setting for key scenes made the action visually more dramatic:

"Instead of having Gene kick Leper out of his chair, he has Gene deliver a vicious blow to Leper's mouth outdoors in the snow where he falls to the ground and curls up in the fetal position, the red blood flowing from his mouth and making a stark contrast with the white snow. Rather than running away, as in the novel, Gene merely stands helplessly over his fallen friend as the camera pulls back, leaving them both diminished and helpless-looking in a setting of cold white bleakness." (p. 94).

"Thus, we never learn what Brinker is feeling ... Larry Peerce, the director, tried to make the atmosphere less horrible and more comic by staging a parade of boys dressed in black who stomped about singing an obscene song." (p. 100).

This could remind some people of basic training, memorizing witty marching ditties, more than the high academic atmosphere preferred by those who should be drawn to elite schooling with athletic games as recreational activities, but the fake parade sounds dramatic enough for the Hollywood version of the novel.

A Separate Peace was difficult for me to understand because it takes a path deep in to a teenager's mind. You see the pains, successes, and problems of the main character's life.