69 pages • 2 hours read
Nicholas SparksA Walk to Remember
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaChapters 11-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
Although Jamie is inexperienced when it comes to boys, Landon feels that “she was playing me like a harp” (123) because she resists his “slick” talk of love in favor of a more honest declaration. Noticing that Jamie often appears fragile and melancholy, Landon takes his mother’s advice about making her feel special, and takes her to Flauvin’s restaurant. When Landon asks Hegbert for permission, Hegbert accepts. As Landon is leaving, after telling Hegbert that he loves his daughter, he notices that the minister has his head in his hands, as though in tears.
As the relationship progresses, Landon notices that Jamie is becoming thinner, more lethargic, and feverish. While walking her home from Cecil’s diner one night, Landon tells her that he loves her. She bursts into tears and begs him not to say that. Her reason is that she is sick and dying.
Chapter 12 Summary
Jamie tells Landon that she has an incurable form of leukemia. She and Hegbert have known for seven months, but they told no one because they wanted Jamie’s last months to be as normal as possible. Landon is devastated, as is Hegbert’s congregation. He feels that “only a miracle could save her” (138) and begins to pray for one.
Jamie quits going to school because she is weak and wants to spend time with her father. The time Landon spends with Jamie is fraught, and he does not know how to act around her. His mother advises him to listen to his heart, and he and Jamie begin reading the Bible together, scouting for a message of hope.
The news of Jamie’s approaching death makes other Beaufort residents change their ways to follow her example. Eric, who previously teased Jamie, has collected over $400 for the orphanage. As January turns to February, Jamie sickens and soon finds herself unable to walk.
When Jamie becomes so weak that a stay in a hospital is imminent, Landon’s mother persuades his father to come home and find a way to pay for Jamie to be looked after at home.
As Jamie grows frailer and less responsive, Landon continues to be disturbed, wondering, “why had all this happened to someone like her?” (159) and why God willed it. Prompted by a Bible passage, Landon determines to make Jamie’s wish come true, so he asks Hegbert for her hand in marriage.
Chapter 13 Summary
Landon explains to his family that he is not marrying Jamie because he feels sorry for her, but because he has received the command of God to do so.
They are married by Hegbert in his Baptist church, which is “bursting with people” (167). Jamie wears the angel dress from the play, and when she makes it up the aisle, Landon remembers it as “the most wonderful moment of my life” (169).
Forty years on, Landon is still wearing his wedding ring, having no desire to remove it. Mysteriously, he says that although he has “lived another life since then” (169), he still believes that “miracles can happen” (170).
Chapters 11-13 Analysis
In the final part of the novel, Jamie and Landon face Jamie’s imminent death. They must now live out the promise of their love within the constraints of Jamie’s weakening body and fading life. Landon struggles to adapt to the facts, not knowing how to act around Jamie. At first, he distracts her with chatter of school, but finding that this approach helps neither of them, he begins reading the Bible with her. The Bible reading marks the surrender of individual will to the divine guidance that has shaped Jamie’s approach to life. In doing this, Landon receives a divine command to fulfil Jamie’s wish of marrying before a packed church. Rather than seeking a logical response of how to handle Jamie’s death, Landon “was doing something that my heart told me to do” (165). Landon’s shift towards a more heart-centered life shows how he has absorbed Jamie’s influence. Interestingly, the lasting memory of Landon’s wedding vows, in addition to the wedding ring that, in 40 years, he has never felt “the desire” to remove, indicate that the marriage lives, despite Jamie’s death. In closing the novel with the marriage, and Landon’s belief in miracles, Sparks highlights that death is not the end. For Landon and the town, goodwill, love, and hope all outlive death.
The character transformations of others in the community also reflect Jamie’s lasting legacy. Eric, who relentlessly teased Jamie for her Biblical eccentricity, is now deeply remorseful and collects over $400 for the orphanage in her honor. Similarly, Worth Carter makes a gesture of atonement for the sins of his father and his own paternal failings by paying for Jamie to be cared for at home during her final days. Landon credits Jamie with bringing “my father and me together again; somehow she’d also managed to heal some of the wounds between our two families” (166). For all her modesty, Jamie becomes famous and revered in Beaufort, as Landon describes her as “the angel who saved us all” (166). In the union of the Carter and Sullivan families, the town’s conflict between capitalism and religion is resolved as all celebrate their common love and humanity through faith and good works.
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