When starting this week’s Writer’s Corner, I decided to visit Good Reads to find out what everyone thought of the book. It had been a good year since I personally read it and formed a small affection for it. If anything, I was looking for a few reminders of what the plot was, to give me some semblance of focus for this piece. What I found was something even more familiar than the idea of the book being called a “masterpiece” that students read in school. I found the divided reviews and in some ways was reminded with how I used to read literature, notably at the time that I presume most of these writers did.
I didn’t read John Knowles’ book until recently, but I could imagine having this on my required reading list back in high school and being agitated. It’s not the most outward book imaginable. Anyone wanting grand fantasy will be disappointed to find that this is a boys’ school narrative where it’s mostly driven by emotion, commenting on the outside world as they come of age and discover personal details about their friendship changing. These are things that are crucial to anyone’s youth, and yet I don’t know that as readers a teenager can fully appreciate its text unless they care to.
I for one was a terrible reader in high school. I once read Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” and had zero absorption. When I went to write a report on it, I turned to Cliffnotes for some guidance and ended up getting a zero and the comment “You didn’t read the book, did you?” It remains one of the most devastating moments in my entire educational life. I tried and failed so spectacularly and nobody would believe me if I told them that I read every page. I was a terrible reader until college when I began to appreciate subtext. This isn’t to say that I hated reading throughout my life. It’s just that certain narratives were closed to me until I changed my approach.
That is why I sympathize with those bad reviews, claiming that the only real value of “A Separate Peace” is that it features an affectionate passage about someone’s butt. Not everyone feels designed to like these dramatic narratives, though I am curious to talk to the people who claimed that this changed their life and understand how they approach reading. I only understand that now, but I wonder what tools I was missing as a reader when approaching assigned reading.
So, what drew me to this story in the first place? In light of PBS’ Great American Read series, I began talking to family and friends on Facebook about books more. We began talking about what literature meant most to us. It was in this time that my mother mentioned that “A Separate Peace” was a story she read as a youth and remembered having a strong impression of it.
The idea of a book connecting with someone else makes it more likely that I’ll want to read it. This isn’t necessarily just because I want to have another great read. I now see it as a chance to understand my constituent on an internal level, looking through those words to find something more personal and honest. Writing, by nature, is interpretive and we all are attracted to different things. That is why I use this column to open up about my relationship with books. I believe that every detail that I love or hate reveals something about my own experience, and because of that I wanted to understand what my mother saw in “A Separate Peace.”
It’s not always the liveliest narrative, focusing more on self-reflection on a friendship that is way more complicated than you’d imagine. One man is jealous of another because of his athletic ability. The issue is that they could never be enemies since he is so nice and caring, mostly serving as this envious force of what the man could never be. He doesn’t want to be so weak. He wants to be a hero, an ideal figure of masculinity in this school of men. The issue is that every attempt he makes doesn’t work out, and by the end, it complicates their relationship in such a way that it makes for a bittersweet ending.
Though if I’m being honest, the detail that was more appealing to me was its placement in history. The way it interacted with the outside world felt more exciting than any of the personal drama. It’s true that it all symbolizes a loss of innocence, both as a country and as students growing up to become soldiers in a war. This is their last moment where everything can be innocent and their concerns called childish. It’s a depiction of youth during a war that permanently changed the world’s perception. It’s an event that would shadow over the remaining 20th century and never truly be forgotten.
Most of us would want to go back to that youthful time and do things differently. It’s maybe to be less childish over things that we only realize in hindsight doesn’t matter. But we can’t. Like war, it’s one of those chaotic creations that can’t be forgotten. We have mild trauma, regret for doing things that we didn’t know not to.
Which makes it exciting to see this in the same way that you’d look at Mrs. Miniver (1942) as these narratives of what it’s like to be alive during the war. It’s not always directly about soldiers facing enemy gunfire. It’s about the housemaids and students who are just trying to live a life that they’ve been promised like their family has for generations for now. Nobody expected to be at war during this time, and yet here they are, having to figure out what’s truly important in all of this behavior. Is it worth fighting over who’s the better student? Is it worth wasting your day on pointless endeavors when somewhere out there soldiers are sacrificing their lives?
It’s impossible to not feel some inadequacy when war is at the front of attention. One of the most interesting aspects of the story is how the classrooms talk about the war. It’s not exactly based on a textbook, but captures an emotional connection that people likely were facing during this time, bringing to life an uncertainty about what was really going on, starting arguments over small decisions that don’t matter in the bigger picture. At any other time, these would be squabbles. Because they are about one of the most significant moments in world history, it feels more important, like we’re judging these kids for every naïve view of the world.
That is an interesting proposition to have even in my own life. While this is one rooted so firmly in a moment, it transcends by how it treats the characters with sensitivity and heart. It’s one where they’re allowed to express themselves, understanding their own frustrations in ways that will give a reason, but may not help it totally make sense. Children don’t have that experience. They have to experience trial and error, and it’s a bittersweet tool that we all have in our lives. Since the novel is largely a retrospective one, it makes sense that there’s something wonderful and bittersweet. On the one hand, we’re happy to be back in a time where the world was wide open, but it was also one where small mistakes began to make big differences.
I think of it in relation to my life because I was 12 on September 11, 2001. I honestly still don’t know if I fully understand that moment. While I am younger than the students of “A Separate Peace,” I still remember it impacting my school life as uncertainty informed my first year at a new school. I made friends, but it came with not understanding how the world was changing around me. I saw those towers fall, and I had no way of understanding what they symbolized in terms of a shift. You can talk to hundreds of people whose ideologies changed overnight because of that.
So while I don’t know what it’s like to live through WWII, I am familiar with the way that the world can impact an impressionable mind. It’s the idea of war informing the conversation of these innocent children, who don’t fully understand what it means. All we can do is talk until we understand what is going on. We’d joke about Osama Bin Laden pretty much because we had no other choice. He was the bad guy hiding in a hole somewhere. We had no way of understanding how severe all of this was.
I suppose to some extent, “A Separate Peace” is a story that has faded from my memory a bit too much to give full appreciation. However, I’ve been able to remember a book’s themes, wondering how it applies to my life and what makes it a significant text. I remember passages about climbing trees and breaking arms. I remember this youthful innocence that is beautiful and sweet. I can imagine that the reason that it plays well for teachers as opposed to students isn’t that it’s a WWII narrative, but because it’s a nostalgic book. Teenagers may have that in small doses, but it’s not like they’re looking back on a big piece of their lives.
Because society has convinced us that high school is a significant part of our life, it only forces us to constantly look back at it. Not all of us had significant achievements during this time, but we keep looking back and at least appreciating how smaller the world seemed then. Controversial themes weren’t as prominent, even during a war where we knew soldiers would be deported in the weeks ahead. I didn’t know what that truly meant and had no choice but to listen to a voice that has mostly grown more manic and paranoid, divided.
In that respect, WWII feels a little more unified in its message and in that way able to feel like a more fulfilling place to set this narrative. People were walking single file and not crisscrossed. As the story ends with them joining the military, there are some revelations, learned a little late, that people act out to protect them from their own insecurities. It’s bittersweet and in some ways, you want to believe their apologies would mean anything that time would go backward and allow for peace.
As people return to school, I am reminded of this story and the way that one book can bring out dozens of thoughts inside of me. I don’t know that they’re all significant to the narrative itself, but that may be why certain books resonate with people. It’s because a passage can hold deeper meaning, connecting to a random moment that they had forgotten. It can reveal something deeper about ourselves, and I feel like that is the lesson I’m sharing this week. It’s a nostalgic one about looking at the past and not get too caught up in things. It’s important to remember and learn from it, but don’t get caught up in your past mistakes. Move forward and try to become a better person. You will never be who you were, but you can work to make your next wave of nostalgia meaningful. I’m not sure if that’s the lesson this book wanted me to learn, but it’s how it makes me feel this week.
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