Who's the enemy really? by Jeanna

Who's the enemy really? by Jeanna - May 2017 Scholarship Essay

The novel that has best influenced my life is A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I can think of three reasons why this novel has best influenced my life. Firstly, I read through this book for the first time at a significant time in my life. Secondly, I found later in life how closely I related to the narrator, Gene. Finally, I value the universal lesson it teaches. It is a special book to me that I hope to hold on to for some time.
In 1999-2000 most of my family went to China with my father for his work. We were there for six months right in the middle of my sister and my public school year in New York. We were able to coordinate with all of our teachers in order to get an adequate amount of classwork assigned to us for this time period. A Separate Peace by John Knowles was what my English teacher assigned to me. I was assigned to read A Separate Peace and answer a large packet worth of questions about the novel. Compared to my other subjects, this was not very much work. But I was so glad for that. Up until this point, I struggled in English. There were many books I had been assigned that I had not read through completely. However, this assignment became a turning point for me. Since this was all I had assigned to me for six months and I found I had more time for reading in China, I read A Separate Peace completely and answered all of the questions thoroughly! I enjoyed doing this assignment and it changed my attitude towards English assignments like this one.
Then, several years later, I found myself back in China. This time as an adult and without my family. I was teaching English now! I taught English at a university in China from 2009-2013. Time had passed but I had not forgotten the English assignment I had been given the last time I was in China and how it affected me academically. So, I decided to read A Separate Peace again. This time I read through it much faster. I did not have a packet of questions to answers. There was no expected grade once I was done. I just read. As I read through it I became so amazed as to how closely I related to the narrator, Gene. Gene was a hard working student. Gene was a teenager who followed the rules. Gene also developed wild suspicions about his roommate and friend, Phineas or "Finny". It was these suspicions that hit home for me the most. I can sometimes be a rather suspicious and distrusting friend.
Throughout the novel the reader has to wonder what Finny's intentions truly are towards Gene, as Gene wonders himself. But it is the unfortunate and, I believe, inaccurate conclusion that Gene makes in Chapter 4 that turns his closest friend into his greatest enemy. This was a result of what Gene later explains as the "fearful shock." The final few pages of the novel is where the universal lesson comes out clearly. In these pages Gene shows how all people can begin an "obsessive labor of defense" against an enemy that may or may not be the enemy at all. War is caused by "something ignorant in the human heart" he says in these final pages. The reason this universal lesson of "Who's the enemy really?" has had such an influence on my life is because I have made many "wars" against others due only to my own ignorance within my own heart.
Due to the facts that I read this novel for the first time when I was in China many years ago, that I relate well to the character, Gene, and that the universal lesson portrayed in the novel has had an impact on me, A Separate Peace by John Knowles is the novel that has best influenced my life...thus far!