Authors can greatly influence readers to follow certain paths in life by illustrating their novels with themes. John Knowles’s A Separate Peace and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time are two fine novels that support similar themes. While reading the novels, the reader will can connect the novels together solely by the themes. Both of the authors beckon the reader to follow a path of truth, honesty, and independence, all of which are shown by examples or counterexamples. The characters of each novel, their actions, and the effects of those actions are what teach the themes in the novels.
The authors of each novel illustrate the theme of the need to face reality in their novels. A Separate Peace teaches the reader this theme by having characters that are oblivious when it comes to the truth who then have to …show more content…
In A Separate Peace, Gene lied to his fellow students about not being the cause of Phineas’s fall. The students eventually got the truth from him, yet the stress that it took to get the truth caused Phineas to break down mentally, making him harm himself, and eventually killing him. Gene’s lie affected himself as well, as the burden of the guilt he carried broke him mentally as well. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time represents this theme strongly near the climax of the novel. Christopher measures love by honesty. So, when Christopher finds out that his mother was alive all along, and that Edward had lied to him and told him that she had had a heart problem and died, Christopher went into a shell-shocked paralyzed state. Edward, unknowing of what would happen next, told the truth about him killing Wellington, and this set Christopher to not only be untrusting of his father, but to fear his father as well. The common theme of lying having many negative effects is just one of the main focuses in the two
The authors of each novel illustrate the theme of the need to face reality in their novels. A Separate Peace teaches the reader this theme by having characters that are oblivious when it comes to the truth who then have to …show more content…
In A Separate Peace, Gene lied to his fellow students about not being the cause of Phineas’s fall. The students eventually got the truth from him, yet the stress that it took to get the truth caused Phineas to break down mentally, making him harm himself, and eventually killing him. Gene’s lie affected himself as well, as the burden of the guilt he carried broke him mentally as well. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time represents this theme strongly near the climax of the novel. Christopher measures love by honesty. So, when Christopher finds out that his mother was alive all along, and that Edward had lied to him and told him that she had had a heart problem and died, Christopher went into a shell-shocked paralyzed state. Edward, unknowing of what would happen next, told the truth about him killing Wellington, and this set Christopher to not only be untrusting of his father, but to fear his father as well. The common theme of lying having many negative effects is just one of the main focuses in the two