John Knowles’s A Separate Piece is a novel that brought World War II into a new perspective for me, and I found myself curious to see what was going to happen next. The majority of the plot was dreary, which I thought emphasized the secrecy and disillusionment of the time, thus creating a desolate mood and making the plot even more dramatic. I found the book interesting because it was not depicting physical combat in the war, the hardships that troops had to go through, or political ideologies of the time; the themes that many war novels tend to be focused around. Instead, it portrayed the influence that the fighting emotionally had on a group of teenagers, and how they, each with distinct personalities, dealt with the difficulties and stress. I felt that Knowles’s extensive use of imagery enabled me to truly envision the setting, characters, and events, which led to a better understanding of the plot. It was an easy book to follow, even though the underlying psychological concepts were complex. I thought the way in which the author captured the essence of each character was remarkable, and at the end of the book, it was shocking to see the transformations that each had gone through. For me, the novel brought a new understanding of World War II that many war novels tend to ignore or overlook, which made it unique by comparison.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Blog 4: Text Connection
A Separate Piece by John Knowles is a novel depicting an incident that occurs one summer to two best friends at their boarding school, and how the repercussions haunt them both and change their lives forever. The storyline to Knowles’ book can be related back to the plot of a famous play written by William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, even though the settings of the two literary pieces are radically different. In A Separate Piece, it is apparent that Gene is jealous of Phineas due to his superior athleticism, popularity, and ability to charm anyone. Throughout the novel, Gene feels as if he is unable to match up the superior qualities of his best friend, and his jealousy finally reveals itself physically when he purposely shakes the branch they are both standing on, which causes Phineas to fall down. Not only does this break Phineas’ leg, but at that moment, Gene does not care to save his friend from crashing down, and instead “jump[s] into the river, every trace of [his] fear forgotten” (60). By seeing him fall, Gene is exposed to a fault in Phineas, and feels liberated because he his friend is no longer a perfect persona that he has to be held back by. Unfortunately, Gene’s moment of carelessness and jealousy eventually leads to Phineas’ death, when he plummets down the stairs months later once he finds out the truth about his first fall.
The same concept of jealousy between friends resulting in the demise of one is seen in Julius Caesar, when high-Roman officials, who are “loyal” friends of Caesar, conspire to assassinate him. Although Brutus, his best friend, tags along in the murder because he feels Caesar is not a beneficial leader for Rome, other men, such as Cassius and Casca, are jealous of Caesar’s success and the way he is revered as a God by the public. Their jealousy eventually climaxes and gets the better of them when they corner Caesar and savagely stab him, resulting in his death. These two literary works seem to be polar opposites, with A Separate Piece situated at a New England boarding school during World War II, and Julius Caesar set in ancient Rome in 44 BC; but they both reflect the theme of how jealousy can destroy relationships and lead to extreme consequences, such as death.
Blog 3: Syntax and Purpose
· “Then my eyes fell on the bound and cast white mass pointing at me, and as it was always to do, it brought me down out of Finny’s world of invention, down again as I had fallen after awakening that morning, down to reality, to the facts” (116).
The separation of this sentence into four distinct parts represents how the accident has had an impact on Gene in regards to so many levels. In addition, the repetition of “down” is a syntactical device that allows the author to further emphasize Phineas’s physical fall, as well as the decline that the their friendship is going through because of the accident.
· “As I had to do whenever I glimpse this river, I thought of Phineas. Not of the tree and pain, but of one of his favorite tricks, Phineas in exaltation, balancing on one foot on the prow of a canoe like a river god, his hand raised arms invoking the air to support him, face transfigured, body a complex set of balances and compensations, each muscle aligned in perfection with all the others to maintain this supreme fantasy of achievement, his skin glowing from immersions, his whole body hanging between the river and sky as though he has transcended gravity and might by gently pushing upward with his foot glide a little way higher and remain suspended in space, encompassing all the glory of the summer and offering it to the sky. Then, an infinitesimal veering of the canoe, and the line of his body would break, the soaring arms collapse, up shoot an uncontrollable leg, and Phineas would tumble into the water, roaring with rage” (75-76).
In this excerpt, John Knowles’s utilizes a long sentence saturated with specific detail to mirror Phineas’s influence on Gene’s life and Gene’s perception of his best friend. By employing extremely detailed descriptions in Gene’s interior monologue, the author is trying to convey how Phineas has such an authoritative status in Gene’s life, and is almost an idol to him, since Gene is capable of recalling even minute features and describe him to such an extent. The length of the last two sentences of the passage aid in symbolizing the accident at the tree. The long sentence represents the monotonous life that Gene had before the incident, where he was always overshadowed by Phineas’s charming personality and physical athleticism. The long sentence detailing Phineas is then interrupted by a sentence where Phineas crashes into the water. This interlude in syntax displays how the crash physically broke Phineas when he was at his peak, in addition to how sudden and unexpected his actual fall from the tree branch was. Furthermore, the diction in the long sentence has positive connotations, such as “perfection,” “gently,” “glide,” glory,” and “god;” all of which depict the flawlessness that Phineas was before his accident. The second sentence however, is filled with sharp and negatively connotated diction such as “uncontrollable,” “tumble,” “roaring,” “collapse,” and “rage;” which emulate the hardships that he faces after he breaks his leg.
Blog 2: Diction and Tone
When Gene first talks to Leper after he gets the telegram from Leper regarding his “escape,” the author employs diction that reveals Gene’s fearful tone, mirroring his suspicion and anxiety regarding the war. When Gene questions Leper on how he escaped from the army, Leper responds by asking him if he even has a slightest idea of what the army is like. Gene states that he doesn’t, since he doesn’t know how they define “normal,” to which Leper repeats bitterly, “‘Normal…I suppose that’s what you’re thinking about, isn’t it? You’re thinking I’m not normal…you’re thinking I’m psycho’” (143). The moment that Leper’s accusation is out in the open, Gene “gathered up what the word meant” and reflects, “I hated the sound of it at once. It opened up a world I had not known existed – ‘mad’ or ‘crazy’ or ‘a screw loose,’ those were the familiar words. ‘Psycho’ had a sudden mental-ward reality about it, a systematic, diagnostic sound…Fear seized my stomach like a cramp…it was myself I was worried about. For if Leper was a psycho it was the army which had done it to him, and I and all of us were on the brink of the army” (142-143). Gene then looks at Leper and yells, “‘You make me sick, you and your damn army words’” (143).
Knowles’s use of the words “psycho,” “mad,” “crazy,” and “a screw loose” convey the building of fear in Gene which is then physically embodied when he yells at Leper and states that his experience with the army sickens him. The employment of diction that connotates instability and lunacy mirrors the fear in Gene that is soon apparent through his anxious tone, when he further goes on to attack Leper and states, “‘he said something crazy, I forgot myself – I forgot that he’s, there’s something the matter with his nerves…He didn’t know what he was saying’” (145-146). The author constantly utilizes words such as “crazy” and “nerves” in the conversation, aiding in Gene’s fearful tone, which represents his alarm at the fact that the glorified stories he has heard about war are false and in fact, the combat has the power to drive even the most capable and “normal” individuals to a state of insanity.
Blog 1: Rhetorical Strategies
· Allusion:
o Biblical: “The beach shed its deadness and became a spectral gray-white, then more white than gray, and finally it was totally white and stainless, as pure as the shores of Eden. Phineas, still asleep on his dune, made me think of Lazarus, brought back to life by the touch of God” (50).
o Historical: “It was as though Athens and Sparta were trying to establish not just a truce but an alliance – although we were not as civilized as Athens and they were not as brave as Sparta” (159).
· Conceit
o “To slam the door impulsively on the past, to shed everything down to my last bit of clothing, to break the pattern of my life – that complex design that I had been weaving since birth with all its dark threads, its unexplainable symbols set against a conventional background of domestic white and schoolboy blue, all those tangled strands…I yearned to take giant military shears to it…nothing left in my hand but spools of khaki which could weave only a plain, flat khaki design, however twisted they might be” (100).
o With foreshadowing: “So the war swept over like a wave at the seashore, gathering power and size as it bore on us, overwhelming in its rush, seemingly inescapable, and then at the last moment eluded by a word from Phineas; I had simply ducked…I did not stop to think that one wave is inevitable followed by another even larger and more powerful, when the tide is coming in” (110).
· Repetition: “You always were a savage underneath. I always knew that only I never admitted it…It’s you we happen to be talking about right now. Like a savage underneath…Laughing and crying he lay with his head on the floor and his knees up, “…always were a savage underneath’” (145).
· Anadiplosis: “It was only that we could feel a deep and sincere difference between us and them, a difference which everyone struggled with awkward fortitude to bridge” (159).
· Antithesis: “The tone of his words fell dead center, without a trace of friendliness of unfriendliness, not interested and not bored, not energetic and not languid” (188).
Knowles utilizes conceit, allusion, anadiplosis, antithesis, and repetition in order to illuminate aspects of the novel that focus around the effects of war on humans. At one instance, his referral to Lazarus and the Garden of Eden depict how Phineas is a character that has been through struggles, yet has a different perspective on life and war in context to his peers. The author’s references are a prominent part of his writing style in that every comparison made has a deeper meaning reflected by the personality and beliefs held by an individual. His employment of deeper meaning into the novel is also seen through his use of conceit, where he compares the war to the tide of an ocean, portraying how both are inevitable; and although each goes through periods of stability and enchantment, or in the case of war, glorified depictions revolving around patriotism, have the capacity to ruin lives and bring about disaster. He also uses conceit to characterize the effects of war on Gene by showing his frustration with his own life and his desire to alter his experiences by fighting in the war to gain a sense of purpose. By having Gene compare his life to fabric, the author is able to portray how war is like scissors that cut through the routing of everyday life and alter one’s perceptions about the world. Knowles’s employment of such extended metaphors are a prominent feature of his style, in that just like his use of allusion, the themes and characters in the novel are given a more philosophical meaning than what is seen. His use of repetition of “you always were a savage underneath” literally embodies his style in that it plants the idea of the existence of discrepancies between appearances and the truth, since every character and situation in the novel has secrets and traits that distinguish their true being from how they represent themselves to others. In addition, Knowles’s use of the word “difference” in his anadiplosis targets the same theme again, further implementing his belief of appearance vs. reality. Lastly, by applying antithesis in his writing, he establishes the delicate balance of embedding a universal theme into the plot, which becomes a distinguished feature of his style. Through his utilization of various literary strategies, John Knowles is successful in getting his point across in his own notable manner, thus bringing his own style to the words on the page.
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