The first and most important theme is: Love conquers all.
Although this idea is sometimes overworked, in this particular work,
it is the most prevalent theme of all. No matter how many setbacks Allie
and Noah faced, their love always brought them together again. First,
they must face the pressures of her parents and their social position.
Her mother hid his letters to her and even pressured her to give up painting,
a talent that Noah had encouraged. Second, they face a separation of fourteen
years in which Noah is shaped by his father, WWII, and his desire to escape
his loss of her. Third, they face her engagement to Lon Hamilton who comes
from an influential and important family. It's only when Allie reads Noah's
last letter to her written twelve years before that she knows where her
heart lies. Even though they marry and raise a family in the wonderful
plantation home, their lives are not without tragedy when their four year
old son dies. Finally, Allie's diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is the
final setback. However, not even it can separate the two of them as Allie's
promise that she will return to him comes true.
The second theme is: Follow your heart. Allie
had spent fourteen years in fear of hurting her family and friends if
she deviated from the standard way of living for her social class. It
was only when she realized that she and Noah were meant to be together
that she made the right decision and followed her heart. Noah was convinced
that they were soul mates who had lived many lives looking for each other,
sometimes finding each other and sometimes not. In this version of fate,
Allie would always make a mistake if she failed to recognize Noah as the
one she was meant to be with for eternity.
A final theme tells us that you cannot live your
life in fear of hurting others.
Allie nearly learned this hard way when she almost gave in to her
fear of hurting her family and friends by choosing Noah. Her parents had
done everything they could to keep her within her social class and eventually
to see her married to an influential and powerful man. Fir most of her
life, Allie gave in to this pressure. Coincidentally, it took a newspaper
article about Noah's house to make her remember a wonderful summer with
him and how much she might still love him. However, she almost gives in
to family pressure even after a wonderful few days with Noah. Only with
the reading of Noah's final letter to her written twelve years before
was she able to see that it was her life to live. and no one should be
able to force her in a direction she didn't want to go.
This novel is written very simplistically in a reader-friendly manner.
And yet, he uses many beautiful metaphors and symbols to highlight the
point he wants to make about the love between Allie and Noah. As a result,
the reader can't help but be touched by his rhetoric and his story.
The rising action begins in 1946 one year after Noah Calhoun has returned
to his hometown to buy the house of his dreams and restore it to its former
magnificence. It ends with his return from the hospital to Creekside where
Allie still lives.
The falling action occurs when Noah makes his way to Allie's bedside
on the night of their forty-ninth anniversary and watches awestruck as
her promise to him comes true.
The point of view is first person in the first and last chapters when Noah narrates his experiences with Allie at Creekside Extended Care home. In the middle chapters, it is in third person as Noah reads the story aloud to Allie.
Clapsaddle, Diane. "TheBestNotes on A Long Way Gone".
TheBestNotes.com.
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