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Personification
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
A Separate Peace happens in one place at two different times: almost all of its events take place at the Devon School, an idyllic private boarding school in New England. At the beginning of the novel, the narrator—an adult Gene—returns to visit the school after the end of World War II. As he thinks about his childhood there, the narration returns to the past, when Gene was a young teenager and the school was full of boisterous children.
Before the war, even though conflict and hardship are raging outside, the Devon School remains largely unchanged. Its traditional, peaceful atmosphere utterly isolates the boys from the outside world. Although they know the war is happening, their adolescence passes without forcing them to be involved in any meaningful way. However, the backdrop of World War II does provide an indirect influence on their lives. Gene’s personal conflicts seem as intense and life-threatening to him as any other battles an American in the 1940s might fight. The school is insulated from the effects of the war, but the boys’ lives are packed with conflict anyway.
Devon is a literal and symbolic haven of innocence. Knowles paints a picture of a perfect, untouched Eden as he describes its environment, with glowingly green trees and beautiful, lazy waterways. As the novel progresses and Gene’s perspective becomes more adult, elements of the outside world begin to shatter this peace. Army recruiters invade the paradise of the Devon School, literally bringing the war to its gates. The physical violence of Finny’s two falls and the emotional fallout of Gene's "betrayal" also mirror the boys’ transition from their privileged, carefree childhood to the harsh realities of adulthood. When Gene returns to the school 15 years after graduating, he no longer feels that Devon encompasses his entire universe. Because he has lived in the outside world, he now sees it as a naive, idyllic bubble in an otherwise much harsher world.
Related Themes:
