Sir Tom Stoppard’s early works
2. A separate peace
Sir Tom Stoppard’s first two plays, A Separate Peace (TV, 1960) and A Walk on the Water (TV, 1963, adapted for the stage as Enter a Free Man in 1968) deal with the problem of the individual as a “private” being, who has to exist in a society that does not agree with him. John Brown from A Separate Peace and George Riley from Enter a Free Man are different from ‘everyday people’; neither wants to participate in the conventional routines of life, and both see themselves as fundamentally opposed to the rest of society. George Riley is the prototype Stoppardian “hero”, and John Brown is an embryo of George Riley.
A Separate Peace, though an extremely simple play, embodies most of Stoppard’s main themes in embryonic form. John Brown has his own ideas about life and is determined to live by his own philosophy in defiance of everyone around him. The tension of the work arises from the conflict of attitudes between the ‘hero’ and his society. John Brown wants to spend time in a private hospital, The Beechwood Nursing Home, because he wants privacy and routine. He wants to escape from the chaos of everyday life towards the order of the hospital.
While in the hospital, Brown paints a mural on the wall, and this is the first hint of another of Stoppard’s concerns, the artist’s status in society. A recurring point of view, which Stoppard affirms and tests, is the one that sees the artist leaving conventional reality and creating a reality of his own. This generates conflicts within the artist himself and for the artist in relation to the rest of society. For the artist, exclusion causes feelings of guilt, from which John Brown is trying to escape.
The hospital staff are against him. Brown is attacking a convention, that a hospital is for sick people, and the hospital staff need to fight this challenge to one of their basic assumptions. But also, in a larger context, they feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with what Brown is doing.
But even though he “shouldn’t,” he feels the need to escape, at least temporarily, and feels that he has the right, as an autonomous individual, to follow his inclinations. Thus, the question arises as to whether Brown is right to act as a free and independent being, or whether his inability to “connect” with society is a fault for which he should be condemned. In characteristic Stoppard fashion, the opposition is established, debated, and left unfinished. We are left to decide for ourselves whether Brown’s argument
It means that it would not be good for you. How do you know what’s good for me? (p. 23.)
It’s enough to justify your actions.
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