A Separate Peace

John Knowles
Childhood:

 Born in Fairmont, West Virginia.

 Son of James M. Knowles, a purchasing agent from Lowell, Massachusetts,
and Mary Beatrice Shea Knowles from Concord, New Hampshire.
 His father was a vice president of a coal company, so his income afforded
them comfortable living standards.
 Knowles attended St. Peter's High School in Fairmont, West Virginia from
1938-1940, before continuing at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New
Hampshire, and graduated in 1945.
 After the war, he went to Yale, where he held a swimming record at Yale
during his sophomore year.
Career:

 He contributed articles to various publications during the 1950s before

deciding to become a full-time writer.
 Secker and Warburg first published a Separate Peace, Knowles’s most
celebrated work, in London in 1959.
 During the 1960s, Knowles was a writer in residence at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Princeton University, while in the 1990s
he taught creative writing at Florida Atlantic University.
 He received the William Faulkner Award and the Rosenthal Award of the
National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Devon School

 Devon is based on Philips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire.

 John Phillips founded it in 1781.
 Knowles modelled Phineas on David Hackett from Milton Academy, whom he met
when they both attended a summer session at Phillips Exeter Academy.
 A student called Phineas Sprague lived in the same dormitory as Knowles during the
summer session of 1943, and possibly influenced Finny’s name.
 Brinker is based on Gore Vidal, who was two years ahead at Philips Exeter Academy.
America in WW2
 The Americans did not want to enter the War until 7th December 1941 when Japan
bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
 A day later, Germany declared war on the U.S
 Patriotism spread through America and many America men rushed to volunteer for
the military.
 Japanese-Americans were sent to camps away from the East side of America to
prevent them from having any contact with Japan.
  Two years into the war, most young men left America so the American workforce
was diminished. Consequently, women were hired for the first time to work.
 Towards the end of the war, women made up around one third of the workforce.
 When American soldiers wrote home, they did not describe the atrocities that they
had seen to increase morale.
 The Americans that were still in the country supported the fight against the Germans
and the president at that time (Teddy Roosevelt) was able to rally the people and get
them to donate their belongings to make arms through scrap metal.

Bildungsroman

 A bildungsroman is a novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual

education.
 It is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the
protagonist from youth to adulthood, in which character change is extremely
important.
 It stems from German (Bildung ‘education’ + Roman ‘a novel’)
 Common themes are: God and the sublime, a class struggle, sexual frustration, and
the supernatural
 The term is also sometimes applied to films.
 A classic example is Goethe's late 18th-century work Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre
(Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship).
 Modern examples are the Harry Potter series and Persepolis.
 A bildungsroman typically begins with a deep emotional loss, and as the protagonist
matures, he/she is able to cope better with his/her loss and begins to accept
societies values more.