Comparing The Physical Nature Of Human Nature In The Wartime Period

Knowles uses interwoven imagery to compare the physical nature of the earth to human nature in a wartime period. He contrasts seasons to represent the shift from innocent youth to restrained maturity: Winter’s occupation seems to have conquered, overrun and destroyed everything, so that now there is no longer any resistance movement left in nature; all the juices are dead, every spring of vitality snapped, and now winter itself, an old, corrupt, tired conqueror, loosens its grip on the desolation, recedes a little, grows careless in its watch; sick of victory and enfeebled by the absence of challenge, it begins itself to withdraw from the ruined countryside. (Knowles 128)
The summer at Devon boarding school, a time of peace