A Seperate Peace
A Separate Peace: Final Assignment
A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a great work of art. Paul Witherington's critical essay describes the novel’s strengths, weaknesses, and difficulties, along with the ambiguity of the boys' conflict in its several phases. All in all, he creates forceful points with a few exceptions of invalid points.
Witherington describes the ambiguity of guilt and conscious, art and magic, love and hate, involvement and isolation, and self and selflessness. These different types of ambiguity could in fact, be classified as important. But my belief is that in A Separate Peace love and hate, and guilt and conscious are the two most important throughout the entire novel. Love and hate is shown as ambiguous in the novel from Gene's unsure relationship with Finny due to the lack of understanding if Finny is a "well-meaning friend who simply resists growing up" (Witherington) or a "pernicious fraud acting out of spite or a neurotic who builds protective illusions" (Witherington).
Guilt and conscious is shown when Finny takes his first fall from the tree, Gene’s reaction is blank; he simply looks down at Finny, and then takes a dive into the water (Knowles). Paul Witherington confirms this by stating“…Gene’s emerging recognition of his guilt in Finny’s fall signals his passage from childhood innocent play to the responsible ethical concerns of adulthood.” Gene’s guilt in the novel is the most evident since he has the most to show for it; he tries to be strong, but he eventually gives in to his conscious.
Witherington proceeds to then describe the strengths in this novel. He explains the ambiguous nature of Finny's development. After Finny's announcement of knowing all along that the war was going on, illusion became delusion. After thinking that Finny has a genuine misconception of the human character, he then proceeds to suppress an unpleasant fact. This keeps the reader on their toes begging for more due to the structural dilemma occurring
A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a great work of art. Paul Witherington's critical essay describes the novel’s strengths, weaknesses, and difficulties, along with the ambiguity of the boys' conflict in its several phases. All in all, he creates forceful points with a few exceptions of invalid points.
Witherington describes the ambiguity of guilt and conscious, art and magic, love and hate, involvement and isolation, and self and selflessness. These different types of ambiguity could in fact, be classified as important. But my belief is that in A Separate Peace love and hate, and guilt and conscious are the two most important throughout the entire novel. Love and hate is shown as ambiguous in the novel from Gene's unsure relationship with Finny due to the lack of understanding if Finny is a "well-meaning friend who simply resists growing up" (Witherington) or a "pernicious fraud acting out of spite or a neurotic who builds protective illusions" (Witherington).
Guilt and conscious is shown when Finny takes his first fall from the tree, Gene’s reaction is blank; he simply looks down at Finny, and then takes a dive into the water (Knowles). Paul Witherington confirms this by stating“…Gene’s emerging recognition of his guilt in Finny’s fall signals his passage from childhood innocent play to the responsible ethical concerns of adulthood.” Gene’s guilt in the novel is the most evident since he has the most to show for it; he tries to be strong, but he eventually gives in to his conscious.
Witherington proceeds to then describe the strengths in this novel. He explains the ambiguous nature of Finny's development. After Finny's announcement of knowing all along that the war was going on, illusion became delusion. After thinking that Finny has a genuine misconception of the human character, he then proceeds to suppress an unpleasant fact. This keeps the reader on their toes begging for more due to the structural dilemma occurring