Literary Devices in A Separate Peace Essay

In A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles uses devices to help represent the message, Everything has to evolve or else it perishes (Leper in A Separate Peace, 117). In this quote, John Knowles is trying to say that everything has to grow and mature, and that you cant stay young forever or else you will fail or in some cases die. I believe that this statement is true, and John Knowles proves this through the characters Leper, Gene, and Finny.

In A Separate Peace, John Knowles uses a metaphor to show that the characters have to grow up or else they will fail in life. Leper escapes from the army and goes home. He sends Gene a letter telling him to come to his house and help him. When Gene goes to Lepers house, Leper tells him, they were going to give me a discharge, a Section Eight discharge is for the nuts in the service, the psychos, the Funny Farm candidates (144). Leper is telling Gene that the army had labeled him as a crazy person and he would not be able to get a job because of it. Leper was not ready to go to war; he only wanted to ski. When he came back, he was changed forever and will not be able to live a normal life. This shows that because Leper was not able to accept and deal with the war, he has now failed and will not be able to live his life to the fullest.

John Knowles uses personification to show that if a person does not grow up they will not be able to live. Finny is in the assembly room and Brinker is basically telling Finny that Gene shook the branch and meant for Finny to fall. When Finny hears this, he doesnt believe or want to hear anymore. He quickly runs out of the assembly room and Gene thinks, these separate sounds collided into the general tumult of his body falling clumsily down the white marble stairs (177). Finny doesnt believe Gene would do something mean to him so he runs out of the room and falls down the stairs. Finny is nave and cannot accept the fact that there is war and that people would hurt other innocent people. Finny doesnt grow up the way he needs to; he wants to be in his world where there is no war and everyone is friends, but because Finny cant get past it, he must die.

John Knowles uses a water motif to show that if a person grows up and develops the way they should, they do not perish and can live a normal life. Gene goes back to Devon, and walks across a muddy wet field to go to see the tree. After he looks at the tree and remembers what happened there he narrates, Changed, I headed back through the mud. I was drenched; anybody could see it was time to come in out of the rain (14). It is raining and Gene is all wet, so he wants to go inside and get out of the rain. All these years, Gene has felt guilty about injuring Finny by shaking him off the tree, which later is an indirect cause of his death. When Gene goes back to the tree, the rain acts as a rebirth for Gene and he can let go of his past, finally. This shows how Gene forgives himself and allows himself to move on and live his life.

Ultimately, John Knowles proves that if a person does not grow up and accept the negatives in life they will perish. In A Separate Peace, the devices of metaphor and personification are used to show this. In turn, John Knowles also uses a water motif to prove that if a person does grow up they will not perish. John Knowles takes this message to the extreme with the death Finny, because he cannot accept the reality of war and hatred. Finny is happy and innocent and just wants to have a good time. And as said by many, Only the good die young.