In the human nature, naive ignorance of the world’s imperfections eventually yields to the recognition that the world does contain hatred and violence. John Knowles places his novel A Separate Peace in situations which necessitate this emotional transformation. The characters become increasingly aware of the nature of the world. In addition, symbols help show the interrelation of ideas and events as they appear in Gene’s subconscious mind. In this novel, setting, character, and symbols develop the theme of loss of innocence.
Setting expatiates the theme of loss of innocence. For example, the four major characters in this story are sixteen and seventeen years old, which is the age when teenagers prepare to end their childhood and become adults. Also, the Devon school, where the story takes place, is a place where boys make the transition to full adulthood, and so this setting shows more clearly the boys’ own growth. Finally, World War II, which in 1942 is raging in Europe, forces these teenage boys to grow up fast; during their seventeenth year they must evaluate everything that the war means to them and decide whether to take an active …
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…nature. Finally, the tree off which Finny and Gene jump represents the Tree of Knowledge; jumping from the tree is against the rules, and in doing so the boys symbolically accept the loss of their innocence as Adam and Eve did by eating of the forbidden fruit. Symbols certainly convey the theme of loss of innocence.
In John Knowles’ novel A Separate Peace, the theme of loss of innocence is skillfully developed through setting, character, and symbols. This story simply details a young man’s entering the adult world as all children do. Everyone suffers loss of innocence.
Search for Innocence in American Modernism
Search for Innocence in American Modernism
American Literature from its very beginning has been centered around a theme of innocence. The Puritans wrote about abandoning the corruption of Europe to find innocence in a new world. The Romantics saw innocence and power in nature and often wrote of escaping from civilization to return to nature. After the Civil War, however, the innocence of the nation is challenged. The Realists focused on the loss of innocence and in Naturalist works innocence is mostly gone. During these periods of American Literature it seems almost as if a hole was being dug, a sort of emptying of innocence, and after World War I the Modernists called this hole the wasteland Many Modernist works focus on society lost in the wasteland, but they hint at a way out. The path out of the wasteland is through a return to innocence. This is evident in the Modernist works of The wasteland by T. S. Eliot, “Directive” by Robert Frost, “Babylon Revisited” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and “Hills Like White Elephants” by Earnest Hemingway as will be shown in an analysis of the inhabitants of the wasteland and their search for innocence, the role of children and pregnancy in the wasteland, and the symbolism of water and rebirth.
But before I go on, I believe that I should first clarify what I mean by “a return to innocence.” First, there is some confusion between innocence and ignorance. They are often used interchangeably. Because a person is innocent, it does not mean that he or she is unaware of reality. Innocence is almost like a different type of view. A child and an adult may interpret a single thing entirely differently, but this does not mean that the adult knows more about that thing. Innocence is open …
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…ed society and only through the return of innocence can there be hope of anything better.
Works Cited
Eliot, T.S. The wasteland. In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1447-1463.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “Babylon Revisited.” In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1471-1485.
Frost, Robert. “Directive.” In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1208-1209.
Hemingway, Ernest. “Hills Like White Elephants.” In The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Volume II. Edited by Paul Lauter et al. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1991: 1471-1485.