Mediapolis Community School District

Quick Reference

Friendship and War: The study of power, jealousy, and denial in John Knowles’ A Separate Peace As we explore the perceptions of reality as well as power in societies and individuals, we will consider several main themes:Ø Jealousy/FriendshipØ Memory/RealityØ Denial/Conformity John Knowles tells his story through the perspective of his main character, Gene, years after his graduation from high school. This first-person form allows the reader to understand Gene and his struggle with understanding his life, but it also poses challenging questions about the character’s reliability in the telling of his own tale. Essential Questions:

How do we construct truth?
What are the connections between friendship and jealousy, war and peace?
How willing are we to truly understand ourselves and our motives?

In this study, we will consider such questions in our exploration of A Separate Peace. You will work to learn how to critically read a novel, how to analyze and write a literary paper. YOU will be responsible for keeping up with the following reading schedule. Not only will you need to be prepared for in-class discussion, but you may also be quizzed. Expect "Did you read it" quizzes at first; theme-related quizzes later. Also, we will try to work in some in-class work time each day, too.

DUE DATE Reading Assignment (RA) and BookMark

01/24 Project thesis and sources due; reading time

01/26 RA Chs. 1-2 and BMark

01/30 Project work day: outline due at end; reading time

02/01 RA Chs. 3-4 and BMark

02/03 Project rough draft due; reading time

02/07 RA Chs. 5-6 and BMark—PROJECTS DUE BY 02/09 via email

02/09 RA Chs. 7-8 and BMark;

02/13 RA Chs. 9-10 and BMark

02/15 RA Ch. 11 and BMark

02/21 RA Chs. 12-13 and BMark

02/23 Review and paper topics

02/27 Exam; paper work day

TBA Paper rough and final

Please complete these BookMarks as we have discussed in class—each will be graded on thoroughness and your interaction with the text. If I can't see on the page how thorough that interaction is, I cannot give you credit for it. Also, these should be unique. If yours looks exactly like another student's you may not earn credit. You may work together; you may not have exact responses to the text.


search MCSD