LITERATURE ANALYSIS #1-THE BEST OF ME

The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

1.  The plot of The Best Of Me is Dawson and Amanda fall deeply in love though they were from opposite sides of the tracks. Dawson leaves Amanda because their parents couldn’t accept their relationship. Nevertheless, twenty-five years later they are bought together once more for a funeral. They both have lived a life and had different experiences. Amanda now has a husband with children whom she doesn’t love. Dawson stays single but goes to jail. They meet up, talk, eat, and sleep. The next day they bump into each other once more and go pay their respects to the lost one and dance the night away. Amanda realizes she has a family she needs to get back to. She leaves Dawson. Meanwhile, Dawson’s cousins are looking to kill him. Long story short: they do. Amanda gets a phone call while at the hospital because her son got a heart attack and cries. 
2. The themes of The Best Of Me are love, vengeance, and loyalty. Dawson and Amanda fell deeply in love but had to test their loyalty at the end of the story which led to the climax. It was also about vengeance because Dawson had some cousins that hated him which led to his death.
3. Nicholas Sparks seemed to have a hard time writing things, which led me to believe that he woke up very early just to write and had to go to bed very late at night. I know he had a hard time reading The Best Of Me because I do read the acknowledgments, and in the first sentence there it states, “Some novels are more challenging to write than others, and The Best Of Me falls into that category.” When I usually finish books I have pending questions such as, “Wait, what about this person? What happened after he did this…” but with this book, I had no questions that needed to be answered which made me realize that Sparks is very organized and patient. I’d say he drinks a lot of coffee because of this. I know he’s read over his book several times to cover any gaps he might’ve left. I also believe that he is very social and loves hanging out with people and I might throw in there that he might’ve even loved to celebrate every once in a while. In the second line of the acknowledgments, it states, “The Best Of Me was difficult to write-I won’t bore you with those reasons-and without the support of the following people, I’d probably still be working on it.” He’s thankful and loved.
4. Five literary techniques I observed were flashbacks, tone, foreshadows, symbolism, and personification. The flashbacks helped us understand what happened to Dawson and Amanda after they hadn't seen each other in over twenty years. There was a part of the story where Dawson finds a four-leaved clover symbolizing and foreshadowing that there was going to be good luck. In the sentence, "...the morning pricked the back of his neck..." prick being personified.

1. What drew me to this book was mainly its cover. I know people often remind me that you shouldn't be judging a book by its cover but it was just so pretty and it motivated me to read it. I really expected this to be a happy story with a happy ending… boy was I wrong. I compared The Notebook with The Best Of Me since they are written by the same author and I wanted to cry of happiness as I did with The Notebook. Unfourtanrtly, that's not what exactly happened.

2.  What kept me reading the first ten pages was definitely my imagination, feeling of guilt, and stress over my commitment to reading this book. I imagined the scenery, every detail of it, and I created an image in my brain to see how it would look like. I also felt guilty because this book was recommended to me by my 8th-grade teacher and I never read it. I also continued reading this book because I kept on telling myself that there was no going back with the book of my selection. 

3. My reading habits used to be to read the ending to check if it ends well. Which never really did anything for me because I wouldn't read the book at all at the end of the day. I didn't really start reading until quarantine, but sometimes I would get impatient or mad and take a peek at the ending. But I proved I could read the beginning to the end without taking a peek at the end with this book. 

1.) Two examples of indirect characterization of Dawson is intelligent and careful. It states, "He (Dawson) was probably the only kid in his school's history who studies hard to hide his differences as best as he could." This tells us that Dawson is smart. Smart enough to know that he needs to be careful with what he's showing. His family would get mad and physically abuse Dawson because of this. He tried always avoiding conflict between himself and his family.

2.) The author's diction does change when he focuses on each character. On Amanda, the author gives us more fancy and harder words because of her personality rather than Dawson who didn't get much education thus his vocabulary is simple.

3.) The protagonist which is Dawson Cole is flat. He doesn’t have much personality. He’s very static throughout the whole story but curious. He is very quiet and since his mom left him at three and his dad was an alcoholic which means he had to raise himself up and that’s why he was so mature. He’s was abused a lot in his life which is why he was quiet and tried to stay out of people’s business. 

4.) After reading this book I did feel like I came away feeling like I met a person. There was a part where Dawson finds his purpose of living, which is helping the son of the guy he ran over many years ago. "He suddenly understood why he had been brought here-and perhaps even what his purpose had been along." The son was involved in a fight with the Dawsons same cousins that wanted revenge on Dawson. As I read this text I remember feeling shocked because this was foreshadowing that his life was to end and I didn't want that, I knew he deserved way better.