Peace Breaks Out (1981). Detailed description

Published in 1981, Peace Breaks Out is John Knowles’s sequel to his earlier best-selling novel A Separate Peace. Set immediately after World War II, Peace Breaks Out transpires during the uneasy days after Germany’s and Japan’s surrender, taking readers back to Devon School, a microcosmic battleground of guilt and remorse. In a tale marked by warm nostalgia and adolescent poignancy, Knowles employs a distant, third-person narrator to explore a different dynamic than Gene and Phineas’s pupilpupil relationship. His protagonists, in this instance, are Wexford, a cunning and subtly unruly pupil who subverts authority to exercise his own, and Pete Hallam, a teacher of American history who begins to recognize the ideological tensions underlying a nation in transition.

Peace Breaks Out begins in September 1945 with Hallam’s return from World War II Italy to teach at his alma mater. A former prisoner of war who suffered leg injuries from shrapnel, Hallam is accorded iconic status by the majority of his pupils and the staff, who are currently living on the mythologies of returning war heroes. As he drives through the town of Devon, everything appears “smaller in size” than he remembered. Knowles returns to the narrative technique he used with such efficacy in A Separate Peace, in which Gene also visits a Devon unlike the one he once knew. The relationship between memory and reality preoccupies this section of the narrative: The emotional and physical experiences Hallam endured in World War II have ensured that “life itself was going to be smaller now, now that the great and terrible drama was over, all of the dead were buried.”

As Hallam settles into Devon, he is accosted by his former Latin teacher, Roscoe Bannerman Latch, who invites him to attend a faculty social so that he may be introduced as a staff member and included in the community at Devon. Hallam notes that his former Latin teacher taught him what “the words ‘discipline’ and ‘precision’ and ‘ceaseless energy’ and ‘personal authority’ really meant.” This in itself highlights the emphasis placed upon such personal characteristics and relates further to the image of Devon as an academy whose graduates adhere to the wholesome, disciplined, and well-rounded mold that had shaped so many patriots for military service.

Postwar conflict and ideological tension are clearly present as Pete presides over his first American history class. Initially posing the question “What is your view of American history?” Pete receives heated and antithetical answers from his pupils (15). Tensions within the group swiftly become apparent: The fervently patriotic Blackburn declares it “one long success story” but is contradicted by Hochschwender, a student of German descent, who responds with an overt and politicized paraphrasing of the ethos and principles of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (16).

This, in turn, is opposed by a student of Irish descent, Wexford, who establishes the main dynamic of the narrative: the interrelationship between postwar politics and societal beliefs. This classroom argument becomes a debate about the true nature of democracy and freedom of speech in the press and media, which would appear to be Knowles’s greater debate articulated through the passionate rivalries of teenage students.

The ongoing tensions and provocations between Hochschwender and Wexford take a range of forms, including the publication of inflammatory letters to and from the school newspaper, run by Wexford, and eventually the decision to erect a memorial window in honor of those from the Devon School who fought and died in World War II. The memorial is seen as a counterpoint to Hochschwender’s own assault on the traditions and values these students died for in the Second World War and ignites a series of recriminations and actions among the students who take “justice” into their own hands.

After the commemoration of the memorial, tensions remain high between Wexford and Hochschwender, who continue writing polemical exchanges in the school newspaper. One morning it is revealed, however, that the memorial window has been smashed by persons unknown. Wexford, assuming Hochschwender to be the culprit, immediately assumes the role of chief inquisitor. A second suspect is Tug Blackburn, a member of the ski team who holds the keys to the chapel bearing the memorial window. After breaking his leg, Blackburn suffered from delusions before being hospitalized. Unable to recall whether or not he desecrated the memorial, Blackburn and Hochschwender are scapegoated. Despite his protestations and charges of conspiracy, Hochschwender remains under suspicion until a group of the sporting fraternity, the Pembroke Boys, finally take matters into their own hands.

As Hochschwender rows alone on the lakes, nostalgically longing for the now-departed Adolf Hitler, he is confronted by classmates about the damage to the memorial. After distracting his friends, they fight with Hochschwender, who is repeatedly forced under water until he faints. The group panics when they are unable to revive the stricken student. Meanwhile, Hochschwender’s roommate is interrogated about his role in the act of vandalism. This interrogation concludes that Hochschwender, “top student Nazi or not, had nothing to do with the shattering of the Memorial Window” (149).

Hochschwender ultimately dies of complications caused by a heart condition, and an official inquiry ensues with accusations leveled against his assailants. Wexford rationalizes that they were vindicated in their actions because of the frustration and anger they felt about both missing World War II and the act of vandalism perpetrated against the memory of their much-envied predecessors. After the inquiry into Hochschwender’s death, Tug Blackburn implicates Wexford when he recalls that Wexford also had access to the chapel. Wexford denies ever possessing a key to the chapel.

He proceeds to exploit Hochschwender’s death by collaborating with Dr. Wherry of Devon School to report it in the newspaper as an accident in which the suspects went to his aid too late. Wexford then sees an opportunity to expose the Pembroke Boys and divert attention from his wrongdoing by asking Mrs. Quimby, who was present at Hochschwender’s death, whether he said anything before dying. After she reveals that he said, “They drowned me,” Wexford feels confident that the Pembroke Boys will attract whatever punishment results.

Hallam challenges Wexford as to whether the keys were returned to Tug Blackburn. Wexford responds that Blackburn received them before the memorial was broken, in direct contradiction to his assertion that he had never possessed the keys. It becomes evident that Wexford broke the window to implicate Hochschwender, but Wexford cannot be prosecuted because he holds the information about the Pembroke Boys’ assault against Hochschwender.

In this conclusion, Hallam speaks for a generation tempered by war and weary of a future that simultaneously creates and dispenses with people like Wexford:

He (Wexford) is an incipient monster. . . . 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 those monsters were once adolescents. Here there seems to be one more of them forming, and in Vladivostok or the Belgian Congo or France there are perhaps others forming, and one of these days people will have to try to cope with them, confront them, risk everything in defeating them, defeating them once again, for a time.

For Discussion or Writing
1. Among the main themes of Peace Breaks Out are disillusionment and adjustment in the postwar years. Think about the novel in light of other texts that deal with soldiers returning from conflict, such as Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five or Tim O’Brien’s If I Should Die in a Combat Zone. With all three works in mind, write a well-developed essay on disillusionment in postwar America.

2. Does Peace Breaks Out offer a nostalgic or critical evaluation of postwar society? Write a well- developed essay in which you think particularly about the different opinions expressed about patriotism, freedom of speech, and the proposals placed in opposition to these opinions. What stance does the author assume; how do you know this? Be sure to cite the text to support everything you say.

3. Peace Breaks Out depicts the paranoia prevalent in postwar America, a time when the cold war, the McCarthy hearings, and the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg occupied the popular imagination. Compare Knowles’s treatment of this social mentality of suspicion and Arthur Miller’s depiction of it with The Crucible and E. L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel. While all three writers address similar themes, they use different fictional strategies to induce us to reenvision contemporary America. Evaluate Knowles’s use of the prep-school environment, Miller’s use of Puritan-era witch hunts as an allegory for McCarthyism, and Doctorow’s approach to the Rosenberg case through historical fiction. Which is most effective?

Write a well-developed essay that argues the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches. To learn more about the events these authors are responding to, visit reliable Web sites such as http:// www.law.umkc.edu / faculty/proj ects/ftrials/ rosenb/ROSENB.HTM or http://www. senate. gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/ McCarthy_Transcripts.htm.