A Seperate Peace

The past few weeks we have been reading A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. The book is based on World War 2, but a very big problem underlies the main one of deciding whether or not to enlist; and that is the complicated friendship of the main characters Gene and Phineas (Finny). Gene originally believed that Phineas was secretly plotting against him, and so he ended up making Phineas fall out of a tree, breaking his leg, and effectively ending his athletic career. Gene realizes afterwards that Phineas has never been anything but a true friend to him, and then, the guilt being too much, he attempts to tell Phineas the truth, but Phineas shies away from the thought. I do not like nor dislike this novel; it simply doesn’t interest me, and so i look forward to the next book. I realize that my thoughts about this matter reflect life itself: there will be things that interest you and things that don’t, you will have to endure some of them in order to get to the good parts, and thankfully most are truly worth waiting for. I think high school is a smaller, less meaningful version of this. A regular high school day will be like this, you will sit through boring classes in order to get to the classes that you look forward to (like Mr. Keating's of course) and break and lunch, but at the end of the day it's worth it because you are that much closer to finishing school. Another thing about the novel that reflects high school would be the pressure that comes in your senior year. The pressure to receive all of your credits, to apply to colleges, and the pressure to be accepted. The boys in the novel are all facing the fact that they have to choose whether to enlist in the war or continue on with their education. Teenagers these days are subject to all kinds of pressure that comes from every direction. Some get it from their parents, some from teachers, some from friends, some just pressure themselves, but either way high school is stressful, and it’s the immature teenagers that have to deal with all of the fluctuations in this part of life. Graduation gives instant gratification though, and comes with a sense of relief and relaxation. That is something that the boys in the novel cannot say for themselves, because whatever experience they choose to do after graduating will not bring relief, because it will be marred by the war.

 The stress and pressure of education and what to do with your life follows every generation that has to make the choice: no matter if the choice is enlisting in the army during a war or applying to college after having goofed off for most of high school. There have been many studies on the matter of stress affecting the health and well being of people with high levels of it. This link talks about stress for all of the different generations. War or no war, stress is a big problem in America.