When boarding-school fiction became popular in the 19th century, it tended to be warm and nostalgic, filled with sporting events, practical jokes, and schemes to get even with campus bullies. All of that changed in the era discussed in this book. Holden Caulfield, the narrator of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, drops out of one prep school and is expelled from two others. The conflicts between students in John Knowles's Devon School novels become so heated that two young men die.
-Background Setting the Stage: Prereading Inside the Novel An A Separate Peace Study Guide Beyond the Text: Project Possibilities Suggested Essay Questions
In this classic tale, a young man comes of age at a northern boarding school amidst the backdrop of World War II. Knowles' protagonist looks back at the time he spent at the academy, a transitional period between childhood and adulthood when he struggled to define himself as well as to establish and assert his place in the world. This study guide to "A Separate Peace" is complemented by an introduction from literary scholar Harold Bloom, an annotated bibliography, and interpretive essays about the work.
