About the Author
John Knowles was born on September 16, 1926, in Fairmont, West Virginia. He lived there until he enrolled at Phillips Exeter Academy in 1941, where […]
A Separate Peace
Setting
The values that John Knowles emphasizes in A Separate Peace reveal his belief that an appreciation of nature’s wonders is fundamental to a life of […]
Themes and Characters
The opening pages of A Separate Peace serve as a prologue in the “present” when the book is being written, fifteen years after 1942, the […]
Literary Qualities
None of the books John Knowles has written since A Separate Peace has achieved nearly the critical or popular success of his first novel. The […]
Social Sensitivity
It is a testament to Knowles’s ability that a story about relatively privileged young men in the 1940s, written from the perspective of the quiet, […]
Topics for Discussion
1. How do the boys at Devon feel about the adults they know? 2. Why and how is the school and its setting important for […]
Ideas for Reports and Papers
1. What is the “separate peace” that Gene feels he has achieved? How has it affected the rest of his life? 2. Find several examples […]
Related Titles and Adaptations
In 1972 A Separate Peace was filmed by Paramount. The studio was unable to find a writer or director with the requisite cinematic genius to […]