Comparing The Physical Nature Of Human Nature In The Wartime Period
Knowles uses interwoven imagery to compare the physical nature of the earth to human nature in a wartime period. He contrasts seasons to represent the shift from innocent youth to restrained maturity: Winter’s occupation seems to have conquered, overrun and destroyed everything, so that now there is no longer any resistance movement left in nature; all the juices are dead, every spring of vitality snapped, and now winter itself, an old, corrupt, tired conqueror, loosens its grip on the desolation, recedes a little, grows careless in its watch; sick of victory and enfeebled by the absence of challenge, it begins itself to withdraw from the ruined countryside. (Knowles 128)
The summer at Devon boarding school, a time of peace
and carefree innocence, phases into the winter session, in which conventions hold precedence and the darkness of the war encroaches on the boys. The winter session is dark, regimented, and difficult; it symbolizes the approaching burdens of adulthood. Knowles also uses figurative language and metaphors to strengthen the connection he makes between war and nature. “So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as it bore on us, overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable”(Knowles 109). All people eventually find a personal war and enemy; Knowles suggests that even in peacetime people spend their lives defending themselves against this internal enmity. Literary critics such as Ellis analyze how Knowles uses nature to reflect changes in people by stating, “[they] move gradually to a realization of an uglier adult world - mirrored in the winter and the Naguamsett River - whose central fact is the war. This moving from innocence to adulthood is contained within [these] three sets of interconnected symbols” (Ellis). The interconnection between seasons and peacetime and wartime serves as a backdrop to the development of the novel. These connections will continue to show that as the imagery of nature gets darker, the truth about human nature will become darker too. Knowles uses this imagery to paint a picture that is representative of the parts of the human spirit that we cannot see.
The summer at Devon boarding school, a time of peace
and carefree innocence, phases into the winter session, in which conventions hold precedence and the darkness of the war encroaches on the boys. The winter session is dark, regimented, and difficult; it symbolizes the approaching burdens of adulthood. Knowles also uses figurative language and metaphors to strengthen the connection he makes between war and nature. “So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as it bore on us, overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable”(Knowles 109). All people eventually find a personal war and enemy; Knowles suggests that even in peacetime people spend their lives defending themselves against this internal enmity. Literary critics such as Ellis analyze how Knowles uses nature to reflect changes in people by stating, “[they] move gradually to a realization of an uglier adult world - mirrored in the winter and the Naguamsett River - whose central fact is the war. This moving from innocence to adulthood is contained within [these] three sets of interconnected symbols” (Ellis). The interconnection between seasons and peacetime and wartime serves as a backdrop to the development of the novel. These connections will continue to show that as the imagery of nature gets darker, the truth about human nature will become darker too. Knowles uses this imagery to paint a picture that is representative of the parts of the human spirit that we cannot see.