A Separate Peace Background Information

Author:          John Knowles
Born -             September 16, 1926
                        Fairmont, West Virginia

Died -             September 30, 2001
                        Florida

 Education -   Phillips Exeter Academy
                        New Hampshire
                       (graduated in 1945)

              Yale (graduated in 1949,
BA English

 
Career Highlights -  Brief military service                       Associate Editor
                                  Reporter                                            Writer
                                  Freelance Writer/Traveler                 Lecturer
 

The Novel-    A Separate Peace

                        Knowles' first novel
                        Published in 1959
                        Based loosely on his experiences at Exeter Academy
                        Movie - 1972 (filmed at Exeter)

Setting -         Devon School - boys' prep school in New Hampshire (1942 - 1943)

 Frame story/flashback-    Begins 15 years later when narrator (Gene) returns to Devon; flashes back to the summer of 1942

 
 

Allegory:

An allegory is a story that contains more than one level of meaning-- a literal level and one or more symbolic levels.
Allegory allows a writer to tell a story about literal characters AND to make a moral, religious, or political point.

Besides having a literal surface meaning, the events, setting, and/or characters in an allegory also stand for ideas or qualities and have a second meaning on that level.
 

Other Examples of Allegory:

1. George Orwell’s Animal Farm
An allegory in which the pigs in a farm play the role of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are equal.

  
bullet The ousting of the humans after the farmers forget to feed the animals is an allusion to the Russian Revolution of 1917 that led to the removal of Tsar Nicholas II and his family after a series of social upheavals and wars and ultimately resulted in famine and poverty.
bullet The refusal of the Humans to refer to Animal Farm by its new name (still calling it Manor Farm) may be indicative of the diplomatic limbo in which the Soviets existed following their early history.
bullet Mr. Jones' last ditch effort to re-take the farm (The Battle of the Cowshed) is analogous to the Russian Civil War in which the western capitalist governments sent soldiers to try to remove the Bolsheviks from power.
bullet Napoleon's removal of Snowball is like Stalin’s removal of Leon Trotsky from power in 1927 and his subsequent expulsion and murder.
 

2. Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”  (Click on the image below to link to an online copy of Poe's short story.)

                                                              

                                     (Click here to go to my ASP Allegory by Poe Discussion Questions)
 
 

Back to A Separate Peace Page               Back to Pre- AP/IB English Page        Back to Mrs. Mock's Home Page        Back to AHS Home Page