I decided to read John Knowles’s A Separate Peace because I read it in high school but didn’t remember much of the story. After having read The Things They Carried, I was interested in how a father advises a couple of young men before they go off to WWII, which reveals a much more idealistic and simplistic view of war than O’Brien’s book:

You have to do what you think is the right thing, but just make sure it’s the right thing in the long run, and not just for the moment. Your war memories will be with you forever, you’ll be asked about them thousands of times after the war is over. (199)