year at Notre Dame and later on he was offered a full track scholarship (‘Nicholas Sparks Biography”).
He started trying out hand writing after he suffered from an injury that was in track. After he tried some different careers, he co-wrote a novel with Billy Mills Wokini named, A Lakota Journey to Happiness and Self-Understanding (“Nicholas Sparks”). Later on while living in North Carolina, he wrote the novel, The Notebook, which garnered a widespread recognition for Sparks. Someone said, “Nicholas Sparks follows up his beloved bestseller The Notebook with a touching novel about one man’s attempt to saving a failed marriage” (BookPage). His novel, Message in a Bottle, was inspired by the tragic death of his mother in 1989 in a horseback riding accident. Later on in 1996, his father died in a prematurely in a car accident. Spark’s younger sister, Danielle, died of brain cancer, but before she died, he was inspired to write the novel, A Walk to Remember. Since Sparks and his brother, Michah, had been through so many family tragedies, they wrote a fiction novel about their around-the world trip which helped them with their emotional pain and …show more content…
struggle (“Wedding, The” 331). The Wedding is about a man, Wilson Lewis, living in New Bern who forgot about his and his wife, Jane, 29th anniversary, and she became very upset with him. During the days, Wilson would think about their relationship how to get Jane to love him the way she did when they were younger. Every week, he would visit Jane’s dad, Noah married to Allie Calhoun from The Notebook (“Wedding, The” 330), at the retirement center. When Wilson visits Noah, they talk about how everyone is doing and Wilson would ask Noah for some advice. Throughout the novel, Noah collapses and has heart attacks, but after staying in the hospital for a little while, his health goes back to normal. Reaching towards the climax, Jane and Wilson’s oldest daughter, Anna, stops by the house and announces that she is getting married (“Wedding, The” 330), but the only day she can get married is on her parent’s 30th anniversary. After Wilson and Jane agreed to the marriage, Anna and Jane had one week to plan the weeding and Anna let her mother choose all the decorations and items for the wedding. On the day of the wedding, everything was setup perfectly, but when Jane saw Anna not wearing the wedding dress, she was confused. So Anna told her that the wedding was not for her, it was for Jane. The first scenario of appearance and reality in The Wedding is Noah and Allie’s mythic relationship (“Wedding, The” 337). About a month after Allie had died, Noah would sit at his desk rereading the letters that he and Allie had written to each other over the years or going through Leaves of Grass. When Wilson finally got Noah out of his room, they went to the pond in the morning. Wilson, brought Noah to the bench, and that morning was the first time they saw the swan (Sparks 153). The swan towards them, and Noah thought that they should have brought some bread with them so they could feed that swan. The next time Wilson came back to visit Noah, he was not in his room; instead, he was at the pond. He seemed to have become fond of the swan and somehow became friends with the swan. When Wilson would approach the swan and Noah, the swan would be staring at him and showed him no fear at all. Noah would always be at the pond feeding the swan Wonder Bread on a daily basis in all kinds of weather. He has sat in the rain, cold breeze and burning heat, and as the years go by, he would be spending more and more time every day on the bench. He would just stare and start talking to the swan. After a few months, Wilson asked Noah why he came to the pond so often. Noah replied back saying that the reason why he comes to the pond is because she wants him to. When Noah says “she”, he is referring to the swan and thinks that the swan is Allie (Sparks 154). “Allie,” he repeated. “She has found a way to come back to me, just like she promised she would. All I had to do was find her,” Noah explained (Sparks 155). Noah believes that the swan is Allie’s reincarnation. Wilson had no idea what to say to Noah’s explanation, and he was confused and startled when he heard Noah say that. The doctors, for example, doctor Barnwell and children are starting to think that Noah was delusional (“Wedding, The” 337). Another scenario that Sparks develops appearance and reality is the rose garden. Noah’s present to Allie of a rose garden in the shape of five concentric hearts is an expression of ideal and true love, the work of a true romantic (“Wedding, The” 337). The rose garden started off when Allie was first pregnant with Jane, because while she was pregnant, she became sick. Noah thought that the sickness would go away after the first couple of weeks, but it became worse. She barely got out of bed and become even more miserable by the day, so Noah wanted to give her something pretty to look at from her window. He thought that the heart by itself looked kind of boring and plain, and thought about planting bushes around the heart, but he kept procrastinating on it. Noah told Wilson that in the beginning of this process there was only one heart, not five hearts, because he did not plan on it. Soon after, she became pregnant again, and by that time Noah finally tried to plant the bushes. Allie thought that the reason why he made the concrete hearts was because they were having a baby. She said that it was the sweetest gift that he has ever done for her (Sparks 201). Since Allie said that, he could not exactly stop making concrete hearts. The first time he made the concrete heart; it was a romantic gesture for her, but by the last concrete heart that he made, he felt that it was more of a chore for him. He had to plant roses, and that made it harder for him. He had to keep cutting the roses, so that they can form perfectly. Later on, Allie’s feelings changed for the concrete hearts, because she asked Noah to plow the whole garden under the ground. The reality is that the rose garden was five separate gifts, one heart for each child that was born. The rose garden always held certain sadness for Allie because one of their youngest children, John, had died of meningitis at the age of four. Noah said, “As much as she loved the garden, she said it was too painful to look at. Whenever she looked out the window, she’d start crying and felt melancholy, and sometimes it seemed like she’d never stop” (Sparks 202). Loosing John almost killed her and Noah. After John’s funeral, she could not eat or sleep, and when she was not in tears, she would wander around in a daze look (Sparks 203). When Allie looks at the garden, she thinks about Noah’s love and the death of their beloved child, John. As the family viewed the monument to love, it also became a tragic loss in reality. The final scenario that devolved the theme, appearance and reality, is the wedding from the climax to resolution.
When Anna and Keith, her boyfriend, asked her parents if she could get married, Jane certainly thought it was going Anna’s wedding. The truth was that it was not Anna’s wedding because it was actually a wedding for Jane that Wilson should have given Jane a long time ago. It was part of Wilson’s plan all along. He planned this event for about a year. Anna and Jane went to all sorts of stores and shop looking for items, decorations, the perfect wedding dress, and gowns for the bridesmaids. When everything appeared to be Anna’s indecisiveness over wedding details, the reality was that it was Anna’s plan for Jane to pick out what she wanted. Wilson came up with idea of having the wedding at Noah’s house in the garden. He hired plenty of workers to help him tender the garden, and clean the inside and outside of Noah’s house in a couple of days. During the preparations for the wedding, Jane had thought that getting the best photographers, musicians, and caterers was just a coincidence that they had cancellations the exact weekend of the wedding, but truth be told that it was a part of Wilson’s plan to make Jane surprised on getting her dream wedding, since when Wilson and Jane first got married, then were married in the court house. When Jane saw Anna not wearing her wedding dress, she was terribly confused (“Wedding, The” 337). After Anna said, “This was
never my wedding, Mom. It’s always been your wedding” (Sparks 266). Jane was breathless with wonder and disbelief (Sparks 267). Even though Jane was still astonished on what just happed, the wedding had to go on. Wilson and Joseph ran to the front next to the minister, Harvey Wellington, and Jane got ready to walk down the aisle with Noah. When the time came, Wilson got the rings from Joseph. They renewed their vows that they spoke of long ago (Sparks 270). Our society revolves around what people think about themselves and the others. No one should always believe what others say just because it appears that way. Nicholas Sparks got most of his inspiration for his writing from his family hardships (“Wedding, The” 331). In The Wedding, Sparks develops appearance and reality as the theme in variety of scenarios. Someone says, “Spark’s fans have from the very beginning eagerly anticipated a sequel to the romantic tale of Allie and Noah Calhoun. The wait is now over…Sparks tells his sweet story…[with] a gasp-inducting twist at the very end. Satisfied female readers will close the covers with a sigh” (Publishers Weekly). Despite that in the beginning, Wilson’s marriage was going downhill and was unable to express his love to Jane. He spent so much time in his or office. His wife could leave him and his daughter is about to get married, but he knew that he had to stop it. His love for Jane grew over the years, and he tried everything he could do so that he could save their marriage. With the inspiration from the memories of Noah and Allie’s life spent together to guide him, he was devoted to find a resolution for his wife, Jane, to fall in love with him all over again. In the end, he found a perfect resolution to get their love back together (Sparks). An individual said, “Sure to leave you breathless…In this stunning follow-up to The Notebook, readers new and old will remember the joy of falling in love and the challenge of staying in love” (RoundTableReviews.com).
Works Cited
"Wedding, The." Novels for Students. Vol. 1. Ed. Anne Maria Hacht. Detroit: Gale Cengage Learning, 2010. 330-37. Print.
"Nicholas Sparks." FAMOUS AUTHORS. N.p., 25 Feb. 2012. Web. 18 Feb. 2013.
"Nicholas Sparks Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2013.
Sparks, Nicholas. The Wedding. New York: Warner Books, 2003. Print.
Sparks, Nicholas C. "Nicholas Sparks." Biography . N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2013.