Academy

The ability to sustain relationships and adapt to society often depends on a person’s perspective, personality, and motivations. In the novel A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, the main characters are Gene Forester and Phineas. Knowles portrays Finny as the light to Gene’s dark side, the yin to his yang. Knowles creation of characters with opposing personalities helps to further develop the novel. The most prominent character in A Separate Peace is Gene Forrester. In the novel, Gene is grown up…

Throughout A Separate Peace, Knowles uses juxtaposition to develop the characters of Gene and Phineas, also known as Finny. They are always with each other, and Gene even juxtaposes himself against Finny multiple times in the book. Consequently, these contrasts between them help establish their character; who they really are. One example of juxtaposition would be how Gene and Finny performed in school. Each of the boys had something they excelled at. For Finny, it was athletics; for Gene is…

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, is a fictional novel about a boy named Gene Forrester and his life at the Devon Private School, during the early 1940’s. Gene faces many challenges and hardships throughout the book, one being the war. The war ends up taking over life at Devon, starting with the boys picking apples for the war effort, then Leper Lepellier enlisting, and eventually the troops moving in, and dominating life at Devon. The war slowly starts influencing life at Devon, starting with…

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” (Maya Angelou) The story A Separate Peace by John Knowles is a coming-of-age story that outlines the summer adventures of the jealous, intelligent Gene and his athletic best friend Finny at Devon School in New Hampshire. Regardless of their close relationship, Gene still harbors some resentful feelings towards Finny which get worse when Gene assumes Finny is trying to keep him distracted from his schoolwork, and…

James Cameron’s Avatar is a very well-crafted film that exemplifies one of the darkest aspects of human nature; greed. The basic plot of the movie is that an ex-marine is sent to a far off world to work for a corporation mining a rare and valuable resource called unobtainium. However, the planet is inhabited by a primitive alien species that happens to live right on top of the largest deposit of unobtainium in the entire planet, and despite numerous attempts at negotiation, they refuse to…

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide…”proclaimed Emerson (370-372). John Knowles novel, A Separate Peace, takes place at Devon School of New Hampshire, 1942-1943. The narrator Gene is a conformist who questions his personal identity, which becomes lost in the envy of is best friend, Phineas. The mixed feelings of admiration and jealousy toward Finny are portrayed in the book. The novel, A Separate Peace,…

To this day, the Carter Family is widely considered as the most influential group in country music and are commonly known as the first family of country music. Their style of play was responsible for influencing several genres of music that is played today including, country, bluegrass, rock and Southern Gospel. Several of their songs, such as “Wasbash Cannonball” and “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” set the standards for what is country music. The Carter Family, all born and raised in Virginia, was…

Comparing the movies The Count of Monte Cristo and Shawshank Redemption share a lot of similar qualities in the realm of revenge as its main theme. In the film Shawshank Redemption the main character Andy Dufrense is accused of shooting his wife and lover yet he remained unable to recollect any memory of such actions and therefore he is falsely accused and imprisoned. In the movie The Count of Monte Cristo’s the protagonist Edmond Dante is decived by his falsely claimed best friend which in…

“You can change your hair and you can change your clothes. You can change your mind, that’s just the way it goes. You can say goodbye and you can say hello, but you’ll always find your way back home,” - Miley Cyrus. Life takes everyone far away, but home will always be where the heart is. Award-winning country singer Carrie Underwood was born on March 10, 1983 in Muskogee, Oklahoma. As soon as Underwood began singing for audiences, her career took of. Her songs “Jesus, Take The Wheel” and…

The Shawshank Redemption is the tale of a banker who is wrongly convicted of double murder and his struggle to survive in Shawshank prison. The director, Frank Darabont, utilises the effect of colour, symbolism and foreshadowing to position the viewer to feel compassion towards the oppressed inmates and hostility towards the Warden and guards. Darabont, raises issues such as: institutionalisation, hope, freedom, corruption and oppression and has created a plot consisting of rising action and…