Knowles’s exploration of how people are controlled by psychological forces which they do not understand far surpasses the war theme that is worked into A Separate Peace. This theme involves Forrester’s attempt to find a way to cope with World War II, a different kind of reality that awaits the Devon School boys after their school year. Different ways of dealing with the exterior world are offered by Finny (who ignores it, for as long as he can), Hadley (who approaches everything logically and reasonably), and Leper (whose romanticism fails to prepare him for the violence of enlistment and military service).