A Separate Peace: Enhancing Literary Merit through Propaganda and Homoerotic Tones A Clash Of Kings author George R.R Martin remarked, “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say” (“Censorship Quotes”). Historically, banning books has been a common method of censoring certain ideologies from reaching the common public, often due to religious or cultural differences, in the hope of forbidding liberal ideas. The novel A Separate Peace by John Knowles has been ridiculed in many classrooms around the nation as being a “filthy, trashy sex novel” (“Banned Books”). In addition, the novel is “one of the ALA’s top 100 novels.to be banned or challenged” (“Banned Books”). Written against the backdrop of World War II, A Separate Peace narrates the story of Gene
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Knowles’s denial to capitulate to societal beliefs and instead reveal real instances of raw human desire and hate through Gene and Finny elicit strong emotional responses to the story, thus developing this literary element throughout the book. The novel’s underlying tone of homoerotic love, despite the violent actions of Gene, allows Knowles to create multi-faceted characters that point to characteristics within human nature that are seen as controversial and led to the banning of the book. As the book is set in 1942, the boys are exploring their relationship through the lens of their time and while Knowles doesn’t explicitly confirm this kind of desire between the boys, author of the novel’s Afterword David Levithan feels that Knowles “created a compelling reason for the boys to have [it].” After Gene confesses to Finny that he “shook the branch” and purposefully tried to hurt him, Finny “seize[s] [his] shoulders and sh[akes] [him] hard” (Knowles chapter
Knowles’s denial to capitulate to societal beliefs and instead reveal real instances of raw human desire and hate through Gene and Finny elicit strong emotional responses to the story, thus developing this literary element throughout the book. The novel’s underlying tone of homoerotic love, despite the violent actions of Gene, allows Knowles to create multi-faceted characters that point to characteristics within human nature that are seen as controversial and led to the banning of the book. As the book is set in 1942, the boys are exploring their relationship through the lens of their time and while Knowles doesn’t explicitly confirm this kind of desire between the boys, author of the novel’s Afterword David Levithan feels that Knowles “created a compelling reason for the boys to have [it].” After Gene confesses to Finny that he “shook the branch” and purposefully tried to hurt him, Finny “seize[s] [his] shoulders and sh[akes] [him] hard” (Knowles chapter