The novel, A Separate Peace, is a realistic fiction piece that takes place in a school in New Hampshire. It is realistic in the fact that the novel was based on the real life events of World War 2. The depiction of the life of the boys behind closed campus (sometimes open) is what young teenagers could have experienced in a military school at that time.  The novel takes place in a military school, Devon, in New Hampshire. The time period is World War 2, circa 1940s, a time where young gentlemen were being prepared for shipping off into a war that wasn’t exactly theirs, but the country’s.  The location of the story is a vital component to the framework. The walls of the school are supposed to symbolize the isolation from war, but the peace gradually leaves the school as stated in the first sentence of Chapter 6.  The war that takes place outside the school manages to seep in to create conflict with Gene and his companions.

The book is fiction, as the characters are not real, along with Devon. The lifestyle of the military school is real, and that could very well happen today, the only exception is the dramatic “backdrop” the war has that shrouds the story in a negative way.