CH-1, P 9-20: The novel opens up with present day Gene (1958ish) narrating his return to Devon 15 years after he graduates (til the middle of page 14). Why does John Knowles begin the novel this way? What is the purpose? What is the effect?
Gene narrates his return to Devon to make it more real to the reader and to help them visualize the scenes Gene saw and is seeing now. As Gene walks along Gilman Street, he describes how the houses become slowly less fancy and more run-down looking as he approaches the school, giving the reader a clear picture of the street. As he is walking up the stairs in the Academy Building, he describes the worn patches in the center of each stair. The scene when Gene arrives at the playing field and describes how they “Reached soggily and emptily away from me, forlorn tennis courts on the left, enormous football and soccer and lacrosse fields in the center, woods on the right, and at the far end a small river detectable from this distance only by a few bare trees along its banks,”(13) really puts a clear picture in the readers mind. Knowles had Gene narrating his walk through the school to make it more believable to the reader.
Why do you think Gene is back at the school after so many years? Why does gene describe the school as run-down and “tired” if he also says it is one of the most beautiful schools?
Im response to your question, I think that Gene returned to the school because it was where he grew up,and he missed it. Since it was a boarding school Gene was there all the time. His attention was brought back to it because when remembering his childhood, he realized how it was spent at Devon, and his old memories with friends is what made him want to return. I also think that he describes the school as tired and run-down because it is. During the time that Gene was here, it was a nice, fresh looking school, but there was a war going on, so once he came back he realized how the place that had protected him from the dangers of war, were actually run-down and old. On page 9, "Perhaps the school wasn't as well kept up in those days; perhaps varnish, along, with everything else, had gone to war." This quote shows that when Gene was there he thought it was fine, but he never payed attention as much to the actual buildings because there was a war going on
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