The format of separation

From the beginning of the second "chapter", on page 21, a separation occurs within the group. This is caused by them going off to boarding school, with the boys going to one school, and the girls going to another. But there are 2 other ways in which the two groups are separated from each-other, and from the way they used to live and interact with one another. In the first part of the book, when they played together as children. the first part of the book follows a "stream of consciousness style of narration. The only structure in what the children think about is that the thoughts flow from one to another. for example on page seven, where it starts with Luis thinking about how Jinny kissed him, then cuts to Susan thinking about how she saw Jinny kissing Louis, to Bernard thinking about how Susan runs past him, crying. Their thoughts seam to flow from one to another, like a stream. And yet, for the most part, they all think about different things, or think about the same things differently than the others. This gives the passage a very free and youthful feel to it, the stream flows, but it constantly changes direction, and nothing can impede it or hold it back.

This all changes on page 21, in which the stream becomes far more structured to match the strict, boarding school setting. While before, the order of their thoughts was erratic, and seemed to follow no specific pattern. Now, the order matches how they have been separated. We are presented with the thoughts of all the boys, and then the girls. While they still have their own thoughts, their thoughts seem to stray less form the "main stream". Rather than thinking about different things, which they did for most of the first passage, they are now simply thinking of the same things differently. The boys have different opinions of Percival, the girls when they encounter the looking glass on the stairs. What's more, the font actually goes out of its way to enforce this separation. Whenever the boys stream ends and the girls begins, or vice verse, the first two words of the first boy/ girl are done in all caps, something that we had not seen up until this point.

"NOW," SAID Bernard
 "THIS IS MY first night in school," said Susan.

It is as though, by putting these words in all caps, Wolff is erecting a wall, another way in which the boys and girls are separated, isolated from one another. This ends on page 87, after they have all graduated and are able to meat each other once again

"The door opens, the door goes on opening," said Neville, "yet he does not come."
"There is Jinny," said Susan