From the Bookshelf of Read Always…

A Separate Peace

John Knowles

Start date: July 1, 2018

Finish date: July 31, 2018

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Aug 03, 2018 Kevin rated it really liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I was able to make so many connections with this book! I grew up with two really good friends who went through some of the same situations and behaved the same way as Finny. My first best friend, was very athletic. He was driven to be the best at sports and I think it had much to do with his brother who was a state champion wrestler and also very driven athletically. He died at an early age as well, when he was going to college. My second best friend, whom I met a couple years after the first, w I was able to make so many connections with this book! I grew up with two really good friends who went through some of the same situations and behaved the same way as Finny. My first best friend, was very athletic. He was driven to be the best at sports and I think it had much to do with his brother who was a state champion wrestler and also very driven athletically. He died at an early age as well, when he was going to college. My second best friend, whom I met a couple years after the first, was the thrill seeking, adventurous type. He had a tree over the pond on his property. He tied a rope to it so we could swing out over the water and fall in if we desired. This story brought back many good and bad memories of those friendships. That is definitely one of the positive traits of this book that it was easy to identify with the characters.

In many ways I was also able to identify with Gene. In chapter one he states, "...they of course were the same stairs I had walked up and down at least once very day of my Devon life." He goes on to discuss how he views the stairs after so many years of maturing both mentally and physically. I felt this way when I walked up the steps to my Grandparent's house after my Grandpa died. I had been away for so long, growing up and building my family. The stairs, and the house, seemed smaller. They never changed but I sure did.

Knowles summed up the title of this book in the following phrase, "It wasn't the cider which made me surpass myself, it was 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." As an adolescent, and even as an adult, I have done this. I had some pretty tough times as a child, and during the roughest my friends and I always found a way to escape the "war" for a short time. It is how I view my summers off as a teacher as well. The battle is still out there, but for a time at least I have a separate peace that not many others get the privilege to experience. The battle for many rages on daily.

Oh to be as young and naive as the boys in this book. They had no way to really know that horror and strife of real life while they were in the comfort of Devon. I remember when life slapped me in the face and I realized I had been living a delusion. Many of the students I teach are in that point of their lives given I teach high school. It has become my mission to try and ready these young people for the reality that they will so soon face. The war is real. It is not a story made up by some fat old men as Finny put it. I know students who are like both Finny and Gene in how they view the world, however. I would say that most teens will more likely identify with Finny, and it will take an incident or event in their lives when they will accept the reality and truth of their adult life that comes to them blindingly fast. I really enjoyed this book and recommend it. It is a fitting story for teens and I did not find anything in the story that would be considered inappropriate for this age group. I will likely seek to read other novels from Knowles and would even consider reading "A Separate Peace" with students. ...more

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