“A Separate Peace” by John Knowles is set in an all boy’s school in New England called Devon. Devon its self is old and beautiful and has (at least at first) a peaceful feel to it. The boys are all very comfortable here and have time to goof off and be boys in their little world outside of that war. But as the book progresses, it becomes the place of great tragedy, even for the people who have left Devon behind (like Leper).

It is around the time of world war two that the boy’s go through those fateful years with each other and discover the meaning of responsibility- a time that forced the young boys of all the world to the thrown into the grueling fear of the war and the boys at Devon are certainly no exception. The boys are all very immature at first in this war, and a couple refuse to even believe in it, but they all discover that it is all very real and dangerous, and its effects are not to be taken lightly. The time period did not allow the boys to escape their responsibility and this is the only thing that had the power to do such a thing.

The book is fiction although it conveys a very realistic idea of what war is and its very possible effects on the mind of the youth. It strikes a chord of relatability, but also sympathy in its harsh, yet possible dramatic turn of events. Knowles tries to achieve this by balancing the extreme with the realistic by creating a believable setting and combining it with many compounded small tragedies, that are all likely but the fact that there’s so many of them adds a sense of despair that is not shared by the matured characters.