Theme

-Determination for true love


John meets Savannah in North Carolina while he is having a vacation there meanwhile Savannah is having her spring break and helping to build a house for Habitat for Humanity.Their attraction is mutual and they quickly fall in love. However,John has to leave two weeks after they met to go back to complete his army enlistment. Savannah agrees that she would wait for him to finish his tour of duty. They write letters to each other and pick up where they left off when he comes back on another leave. However they start to drift apart when 9-11 occurs and John is forced to re-enlist in the army. They begin to grow apart and eventually Savannah sends him a letter that says she is in love with someone else. John is heartbroken and stops communicating with her. Few years later, John's father dies and leaves John all the coins from his coin collection that is worth a lot of money. While John is home for his father’s funeral, he decides to go to visit Savannah.She is married with her best friend she grew up with,Tim. However,Tim has Melanoma and there is nothing the doctors can do anymore. Savannah wants to send him to a better hospital that can run experiments and tests on him but she can't afford it. John donates all the money of his father's coin collection to Tim's fund before John leaves to go back to Iraq because of his love to Savannah which can prove by what he said” I know that my feeling about Savannah will never change, and I know I will always wonder about the choice I made.”(p. 334)











-Loss of a loved one

Throughout the book there are many losses. For example, John had lost Savannah and his parents, Savannah lost Tim and almost John, and Tim lost both of his parents. They all lost their loved ones because of different things, mostly because of death or complications. People all deal with loss differently, some people go in deep depression, others try to forget it by not thinking about it at all and most people just learn to forget as time goes by. In some cases people will just accept that they are dying, like Tim, he knew that both John and himself were in love with Savannah and she was also in love with them both. Tim accepted that he was soon going to die and told John, “Because, it wasn’t the same. I know she loves me, but she’s never loved me the way she loved you. She never had that burning passion for me, but we were making a good life together. She was so happy when we started the ranch and it just made me feel so good that I could do something like that for her. Then I got sick, but she’s always here, caring for me the same way I’d care for her if it was happening to her.” (p. 324). This quotation shows how deep was Savannah’s love to Tim and John,however, she lost Tim and John at the end of the novel.

Lens

Psychoanalytical


John Tyree was ruled by id and ego throughout most parts of the novel.
He had a low self-esteem.
He was a rebel in high school and wasn’t always the nice guy he is today. John Tyree used to hang out with the wrong crowd and flunked his classes, even though he knew he could do better. He didn’t always make the right decisions. Some nights he came home with his breath reeking of alcohol and his jacket lingering with the smell of smoke. He acted this way because he never had a stable parent to lay down the law for him. He took advantage of his lack of rules and control. While John grew out of his teenage years he was getting tired of his troubled life. He didn’t want to stay the way he was. He wanted a job and real friends. He then decided to join the army. The army was a good thing for John. He was finally doing something important with his life. He felt it actually mattered. During this time he became a stronger smarter man. His personality changed for the better. He was nicer and more genuine.

Personal Analysis

The theme thoughout the novel is sacrifice for love and happiness. There is a quote that could easily sum up most of what occured in the novel which is "If you love something let it go." John has to let Savannah goes, just as she has to let him go. John's father also must let go when John leaves for Iraq.The general story line was well laid out, and the ending was more realistic than most romance novels. John doesn't get the girl in the end, he experiences a lot of personal growth but with her help . Savannah also grows up through her experiences in the novel. In the beginning she is young and naive, and as the novel takes place she learns a lot about human nature, and the way the world works.Although this novel does not invoke deeper thought or narate about society and humanity, it is well written and a good read.

Quote

“Because, it wasn’t the same. I know she loves me, but she’s never loved me the way she loved you. She never had that burning passion for me, but we were making a good life together. She was so happy when we started the ranch and it just made me feel so good that I could do something like that for her. Then I got sick, but she’s always here, caring for me the same way I’d care for her if it was happening to her.” (p. 324).


This quote shows how deep was Savannah’s love to Tim and John,however, she lost Tim and John at the end of the novel.


" I know that my feeling about Savannah will never change, and I know I will always wonder about the choice I made.”(p. 334)


This quote proves John's truth and determine love to Savannah even though he knows she will never belong to him.

Biography

Nicholas Sparks is one of the world’s most beloved storytellers. All of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, with nearly 80 million copies in print worldwide, in over 45 languages, including over 50 million copies in the United States alone, and his popularity continues to soar.

Sparks wrote one of his best-known stories, The Notebook, over a period of six months at age 28. It was published in 1996 by Warner Books. He followed with the novels Message in a Bottle (1998), A Walk to Remember (1999), The Rescue(2000), A Bend in the Road (2001), Nights in Rodanthe (2002), The Guardian(2003), The Wedding (2003), True Believer (2005) and its sequel, At First Sight(2005), Dear John (2006), The Choice (2007), The Lucky One (2008), The Last Song (2009), Safe Haven (2010) and The Best of Me (2011), as well as the 2004 non-fiction memoir Three Weeks With My Brother, co-written with his brother Micah.

Safe Haven, currently filming in Southport, North Carolina is scheduled for release on February 8, 2013, and marks Sparks’s eighth film adaptation, following The Lucky One, Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, Dear John and The Last Song, which thus far have a cumulative worldwide gross of nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars.

Sparks lives in North Carolina with his family. He contributes to a variety of local and national charities, and is a major contributor to the Creative Writing Program (MFA) at the University of Notre Dame, where he provides scholarships, internships, and a fellowship annually. Along with his wife, he founded The Epiphany School in New Bern, North Carolina. As a former full scholarship athlete (he still holds a track and field record at the University of Notre Dame) he also spent four years coaching track and field athletes at the local public high school. In 2009, the team he coached at New Bern High School set a World Junior Indoor Record in the 4 x400 meter, in New York. The record still stands.

In 2011, Nicholas and his wife launched the Nicholas Sparks Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to improving cultural and international understanding through global education experiences for students of all ages. Between the foundation, and the personal gifts of Nicholas and Catherine Sparks, more than $10 million dollars have been distributed to deserving charities, scholarship programs, and projects. Because Nicholas and Catherine Sparks cover all operational expenses of the foundation, 100% of donations are devoted to programs.

On April 19-22, 2012, he launched the inaugural Nicholas Sparks Celebrity Family Weekend and Golf Tournament in New Bern, North Carolina, a weekend devoted to raising awareness and funds for the Foundation. Sparks and his family hosted stars from the worlds of sports, music, movies and television, along with fans, for a full calendar of events, raising over $500,000.

Setting

Wilmington, North Carolina
-The story is partially set in Wilmington, North Carolina where John's father was a single parent who had difficulty having meaningful conversation with his son and has an obsession with coin collecting.
 -John meets and strongly falls madly in love with a college student named Savannah Lynn Curtis who is staying at a summer home in Wilmington while she completes volunteers for a project for Habitat for Humanity.

Iraq, Kuwait
-The United States succumbs to the September 11 attacks and John, who realizes he wants to settle down with Savannah, must decide between returning to North Carolina to be with Savannah or re-enlisting. He decides to re-enlists and is sent first to Kuwait and then Iraq. 

Character

John Tyree.
-born in 1977 .
-grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina
-father had raised him by himself. –like to go to numerous coin shows with his dad, seeing how he collected them and would sit in his den for hours just examining it and learning about it.
-high school years were the hardest for him and he was a "rebel" and made many bad decisions. Which also led him to get two of his three tattoo's.
-he loves to surf and loves the beach, where he would spend all his time everyday.
- also occasionally like to read, Stephen King catches his attention very well.
-The only one good decision he had made in his life was to inlist himself in the army after highschool, it was a decision he had to make, and needed at the time.
-In early June, in 2000 he was home on leave for a couple of weeks and he met Savannah Lynn Curtis and fell in love.


Savannah lynn curtis 

-a devoted Christian
 a rising senior at University of North Carolina 
-background is more privileged than John’s.
- has a loving family affluent enough to own an old plantation with a horse farm and a beach house
-idealistic and unspoiled, volunteers her time to help build houses during her Spring Break
-romantic,humor, doesn’t take life too seriously
-falls in love pretty hard right away