Assignment #1(9-20): The novel opens up with present day Gene (1958ish) narrating his return to Devon 15 years after he graduates (until the middle of page 14). Why does John Knowles begin the novel this way? What is the purpose? What is the effect?

                  John Knowles begins A Separate Piece with present day Gene visiting Devon and reflecting on what differences he’s noticed. He observes that the school now looks more rigid and less lively, and to Gene, it looks “…as though a coat of varnish had been put over everything for better preservation” (Knowles 1). The air is heavy with fog, and the picture that Gene paints of Devon is bleak and colorless. The first part of Chapter 1 sets a mood of nostalgia and solemnity, but in a stark contrast, later in the chapter, young Gene describes Devon as vibrant, warm, comforting, and bursting with life and excitement. Landmarks that embody Gene’s time at Devon have been restored and made magical again as Gene flashes back in time. When Gene visits his school as an adult, he sees that the places he once loved, such as the tree that had been to him “one of the giants of your childhood” (Knowles 14), now look completely unremarkable to him. Places he used to love have lost their that childhood magic, and he can barely tell places that once defined him apart from others. As Gene's age shifts, we even see a transformation in color and weather from Gene’s heavy, dark business shoes dragging in the mud to Finny’s bright white sneakers gliding over the dirt, as well as the overcast, foggy November day turning to a refreshing summer afternoon. After feeling that dark, gray mood for the first half of the chapter, and then being thrown back into a time when there was sunshine and adventure at Devon, it seems as if Knowles is trying to hint that something drastically changed the way Devon sees his former school, and possibly, the world around him.

We watch as Gene travels around Devon, constantly being thrown into his past. He has forced himself to revisit the days he attended Devon, and he realizes all that time has changed. The memory of his school has been preserved in his mind, and he can’t seem to forget all that happened there, making the readers understand how important the events that took place there were to Gene’s growth. He had gotten to know a location a certain way so well in one time, and now it looks different to him in another. This illustrates how time has shaped a place he once new well until that same place is nearly unrecognizable.  In reality, it really is his individual perspectives that have changed. The happiness and simplicity of being a child has disappeared and been replaced with the heaviness and complexity of being an adult. Knowles very deliberately helped readers feel the difference between the two time periods to create the same effect that this experience has on Gene– who hasn’t visited his school, or his childhood, in 15 years. Gene’s observations indicate that this once happy place has turned into a ghost of a memory of happiness. His school, representing his time as a carefree adventurous boy, has turned into a glossy museum, a memorial for his lost childhood innocence. Gene tells us, “Everything at Devon slowly changed and slowly harmonized with what had gone before. So it is logical to hope that… I could achieve, perhaps unknowingly already had achieved, this growth and harmony myself,” (Knowles 12). This makes the reader realize that Gene has evolved since the adventurous moments before high school, and it makes us wonder what could have happened during high school, as well as throughout his early adulthood, to change how he views the world around him. Gene, as well as the readers, see that his life experiences after he graduated have accumulated and buried the boy he once knew himself to be. By showing such contrasting images of the same place, one in the summer before high school and one 15 years later, Knowles sets the stage for the explanation and story of all that happened in between.