A Separate Peace | Style

A Separate Peace Style

Point of View

Told in first person ('T') by Gene Forrester, a man in his thirties recalling his adolescence, A Separate Peace begins with Gene's visit to the Devon School. The first pages of the novel mainly describe the physical landscape of the institution; the rest tells Gene's story, a tale in which he serves as both an observer and a participant at the center of the action. As Ronald Weber notes, "Generally, first person narration gives the reader a heightened sense of immediacy, a sense of close involvement with the life of the novel... With Knowles's novel, however, this is not the case. .. throughout. It he remains somewhat outside the action and detached from the narrator, observing the life of the novel rather than submerged in it" This is not intended as a criticism, however. As Weber explains, Knowles's choice of narration is "a highly-calculated effect It indicates a sharply different...
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