Dear John: My Take on the Book

WARNING: This post contains spoilers.

DISCLAIMER: This is not a book review.

The minute I put the book down, I felt the urgency to write about it. So here it goes.

After my best friend told me to read this book, which by the way, she always does after reading a good book. I felt with Dear John, she was a little more zealous. She said it would make me cry. And so, as curious as I ever could be, I grabbed a copy and plunged into reading.

The book was the first I would read of Nicholas Sparks’ and I must admit my expectations were high as I’ve seen Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember and The Notebook on the big screen. I loved them all especially the simple yet touching story of the notebook, which is my favorite by the way, but that would be in a different post.

Dear John, like my friend had said, made me cry. But not in the way I thought it would. The bits of John and his father were very mundane yet it evokes warmth that touches the heart, especially during the time that he came to understand his father and realized how much he was loved by him. When his father was bound by sickness, he stood by him and felt that in a simple way, they shared a bond that would make the estrangement they shared in the past irrelevant. Those bits, especially the scenes when they were together before his father was sent to a care facility made me cry. Sob, even. I felt sad as I read those parts. It was the good kind of sad, you know. The feeling that you’re sad because his father passed on but you know that there was no other way to it and that there was closure. And fulfillment too.

But the part between John and Savannah, I was a little unsure. Sure they loved each other and what they had was magical but as do most long distance relationships, they were forced to adjust to lives away from each other, gradually drifting apart in the process.

She wrote her every time but after a while, her letters slow. Soon, she wrote him one last letter and confessed that although she did not mean to, she fell in love with another man. Not long after, John found out she got married when he visited her after his dad’s funeral.

In the end, they did not end up together. And all there was were three empty hearts: Savannah’s, who still loves John; Her husband’s, who knows that although Savannah sincerely loves him, she could not love him as much as she loved John; and John’s because he made a sacrifice that would mean that he has to be contented in watching the girl he loved from the shadows knowing that she loves him still.

I cried and was sad. It was the bad kind of sad. Because I knew that there could be another way around it and that there was nothing fulfilling or rewarding about the situation at all. No one wins and they all lose. I found the book downright depressing.

Personally, I think unconditional love is more for mothers or for fathers and not for lovers. Even if it is, I don’t see unconditional love as giving up the love of your life for somebody else. It could be giving up your loved one for something that would make her happy or safe. And I swear in the book’s case, she wouldn’t have preferred that.

Or maybe I’m not really talking about unconditional love or defining it. Because frankly, the definition I just gave was a shallow interpretation of it. Maybe all I was trying to say was that they make things so darn complicated when all that counts was that they loved each other. When they do, nothing else really matters, right? Even if other things do matter, which do most of the time, hand in hand, they can get through it. Instead, they chose the other path, probably the more convenient path, thus making the story a tragedy.

This is the kind of tragedy that would leave you pulling your hair more than wiping your eyes. And if people ask for a sequel, you know their spirits were not sated.

But then again, it’s just my opinion.

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