Word: devon
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Dates: during 1981-1981
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...grew up in its shadow, paralyzed by youth, full of violence and rage, and suddenly lacking an enemy. Knowles protrays this generation as "riddled with guilt" and trapped by frustration. Having always assumed they would be called upon to fight, these young men discover a compulsion to fight. The Devon boys are determined to defeat a foe at all costs--to crate a foe if need be--and then to destroy...
...Peace. In the earlier novel, he concentrates on the relationship of two friends: Gene, a lonely intellectual, painfully unsure of his own identity, and Phineas, a demi-god, full of love and humor, the embodiment of the separate peace. Although seemingly protected from the destruction of the war by Devon's ivy-covered walls, the two classmates create their own violence. Driven by jealously and insecurity. Gene transforms a friend into the enemy. He deliberately destroys Phineas, shattering the illusion of peace at Devon...
...boys' American History teacher, Pete Hallam, presides over the conflict, commenting periodically on its progress. A wise but bitter former POW. Hallam tries to recapture the innocence he knew at Devon as a student but finds the same violence he thought he had escaped. Instead of adding depth to the Hochschwender Wexford confrontation, his observations reduce the action to a series of cliches. Reflecting on "that monster war," Hallam sees it "sending last thin even here to this still reverberating around the world even here to this little rural corner...
Knowles ends the story with the trite implication that the Hitlers of tomorrow are the school boys of today. Watching Wexford calmly graduate from Devon after effectively disrupting the last remnants of its peace. Hallam muses, "He's an incipient monster, and I can't stop him. For the last dozen years we've seen in the world how monsters can come to the top and just what horrors they can achieve. And these monsters were once adolescents...
Peace Breaks Out is not so much a sequel as a spinoff: different characters, same place. The scene is once again New Hampshire and the fictional Devon School; World War II has just ended. A returning student reflects on the meaning of all this: "Isn't it funny to be starting our senior year and at the end of it, unlike every senior class here in I don't know how many years, no war to be thrown into? Isn't that weird...