War claims all. The separation and peace of the Devon boys in John Knowles’ A Separate Peace is everything but peaceful and separate from the all-encompassing World War II. In A Separate Peace, Knowles gives expression to the latent, but obvious, stale air of war that encompassed the world during World War II. This pernicious air seemed to infect even those most removed from the battle, causing even friend to turn to foe. Or would friend always have turned to foe, and the war is just the inevitable result? Knowles forces the reader to probe these questions in A Separate Peace.

In the novel, the idyllic Devon School serves as a microcosm of the larger war at hand. Devon, a remote New England prep school in the woods of New Hampshire, could be viewed by some as the farthest thing from the rat-infested foxholes or the blood-spattered beaches of the second World War. However, Knowles elucidates a harsh reality: war claims all. Earth’s green pastures and sandy beaches are turned to muck and mud and alluvial gravesites for disinterred youth. Nothing can escape the air of war once its clouds have blocked any hint of sun. And in war, there are no rules: human turns on human and does the unthinkable of killing one another. Is it out of moral duty? Is it out of pride? A will to win? Regardless, the war forces humanity to the edge of the abyss and often over the cliff.

Both Gene and Finny gaze over this abyss on the tree limb at Devon, when Gene, fogged by the war, shakes the limb and leaves his friend to fall, eventually leading to Finny’s death. It was as if the boys of Devon could not escape the inevitable casualties that would surround them; they could never separate themselves from the world in chaos, no matter how remote their idyllic prep school might be.

Early in the novel, the boys think they are the invincible ones, boasting grand tales about enlisting and fighting for glory. When their classmate the meek Leper enlists, the boys share legends of his glorious travels and triumphs throughout the war, not knowing how poorly scarred Leper has become. It is only when the boys see Leper again that they begin to turn away from the horrors of war–the bold and brash Brinker elects to enroll in the Coast Guard; Gene opts for the Navy Reserve. Neither of these boys seeks the glorious frontlines any longer, regardless of the Brinker’s father’s exhortations to seek “war stories.” But this is not a story any longer–the boys cannot separate the fiction of the past from the reality of the present. They must clear the clouds and face the war at hand before it claims them too.

-Charlie, October 2023