A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School
A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School A Separate Peace.pdf - Southwest High School
21I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when Iwas a student there fifteen years before. It seemed more sedate than I remembered it, moreperpendicular and strait-laced, with narrower windows and shinier woodwork, as though a coatof varnish had been put over everything for better preservation. But, of course, fifteen yearsbefore there had been a war going on. Perhaps the school wasn't as well kept up in those days;perhaps varnish, along with everything else, had gone to war.I didn't entirely like this glossy new surface, because it made the school look like a museum,and that's exactly what it was to me, and what I did not want it to be. In the deep, tacit way inwhich feeling becomes stronger than thought, I had always felt that the Devon School cameinto existence the day I entered it, was vibrantly real while I was a student there, and thenblinked out like a candle the day I left.Now here it was after all, preserved by some considerate hand with varnish and wax.Preserved along with it, like stale air in an unopened room, was the well known fear which hadsurrounded and filled those days, so much of it that I hadn't even known it was there. Because,unfamiliar with the absence of fear and what that was like, I had not been able to identify itspresence.Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in,which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I musthave made my escape from it.I felt fear's echo, and along with that I felt the unhinged, uncontrollable joy which had beenits accompaniment and opposite face, joy which had broken out sometimes in those days likeNorthern Lights across black sky.There were a couple of places now which I wanted to see. Both were fearful sites, and thatwas why I wanted to see them. So after lunch at the Devon Inn I walked back toward theschool. It was a raw, nondescript time of year, toward the end of November, the kind of wet,self-pitying November day when every speck of dirt stands out clearly. Devon luckily had verylittle of such weather—the icy clamp of winter, or the radiant New Hampshire summers, weremore characteristic of it—but this day it blew wet, moody gusts all around me.I walked along Gilman Street, the best street in town. The houses were as handsome and asunusual as I remembered. Clever modernizations of old Colonial manses, extensions inVictorian wood, capacious Greek Revival temples lined the street, as impressive and just asforbidding as ever. I had rarely seen anyone go into one of them, or anyone playing on a lawn,or even an open window. Today with their failing ivy and stripped, moaning trees the houseslooked both more elegant and more lifeless than ever.
- Page 1: 1John KnowlesA Separate Peace
- Page 5 and 6: 5"What I like best about this tree,
- Page 7 and 8: 7naturally stronger because it was
- Page 9 and 10: 92Our absence from dinner had been
- Page 11 and 12: 11"Does it?" He used this preoccupi
- Page 13 and 14: 13had often labeled, now achieved a
- Page 15 and 16: 15had brushed on the limb shook me
- Page 17 and 18: 17But the one which had the most ur
- Page 19 and 20: 19"Knock him down! Are you crazy? H
- Page 21 and 22: 21wonder at what he was able to do.
- Page 23 and 24: 23"Swimming in pools is screwy anyw
- Page 25 and 26: 254The next morning I saw dawn for
- Page 27 and 28: 27"You wouldn't—" I wasn't sure I
- Page 29 and 30: 29leaves. Little disregarded patche
- Page 31 and 32: 31me for a second. Now I knew that
- Page 33 and 34: 33called to me on the chapel steps
- Page 35 and 36: 35from just feelings. And this feel
- Page 37 and 38: 37that I had done it, but it was he
- Page 39 and 40: 396Peace had deserted Devon. Althou
- Page 41 and 42: 41water, roaring with rage.I stoppe
- Page 43 and 44: 43trembling, goaded egotism he coul
- Page 45 and 46: 45will never be swayed by all the f
- Page 47 and 48: 477Brinker Hadley came across to se
- Page 49 and 50: 49It was a mistake; the radio had s
- Page 51 and 52: 51Not long afterward, early even fo
21I went back to the Devon <strong>School</strong> not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when Iwas a student there fifteen years before. It seemed more sedate than I remembered it, moreperpendicular and strait-laced, with narrower windows and shinier woodwork, as though a coatof varnish had been put over everything for better preservation. But, of course, fifteen yearsbefore there had been a war going on. Perhaps the school wasn't as well kept up in those days;perhaps varnish, along with everything else, had gone to war.I didn't entirely like this glossy new surface, because it made the school look like a museum,and that's exactly what it was to me, and what I did not want it to be. In the deep, tacit way inwhich feeling becomes stronger than thought, I had always felt that the Devon <strong>School</strong> cameinto existence the day I entered it, was vibrantly real while I was a student there, and thenblinked out like a candle the day I left.Now here it was after all, preserved by some considerate hand with varnish and wax.Preserved along with it, like stale air in an unopened room, was the well known fear which hadsurrounded and filled those days, so much of it that I hadn't even known it was there. Because,unfamiliar with the absence of fear and what that was like, I had not been able to identify itspresence.Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in,which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I musthave made my escape from it.I felt fear's echo, and along with that I felt the unhinged, uncontrollable joy which had beenits accompaniment and opposite face, joy which had broken out sometimes in those days likeNorthern Lights across black sky.There were a couple of places now which I wanted to see. Both were fearful sites, and thatwas why I wanted to see them. So after lunch at the Devon Inn I walked back toward theschool. It was a raw, nondescript time of year, toward the end of November, the kind of wet,self-pitying November day when every speck of dirt stands out clearly. Devon luckily had verylittle of such weather—the icy clamp of winter, or the radiant New Hampshire summers, weremore characteristic of it—but this day it blew wet, moody gusts all around me.I walked along Gilman Street, the best street in town. The houses were as handsome and asunusual as I remembered. Clever modernizations of old Colonial manses, extensions inVictorian wood, capacious Greek Revival temples lined the street, as impressive and just asforbidding as ever. I had rarely seen anyone go into one of them, or anyone playing on a lawn,or even an open window. Today with their failing ivy and stripped, moaning trees the houseslooked both more elegant and more lifeless than ever.