47 pages • 1 hour read
Nicholas SparksThe Best of Me
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Power of True Love
The novel predominantly deals with the emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical dimensions of true love and the power such love can wield over the lives of the people in love. The Best of Me contains two romance threads. The romance between Amanda and Dawson is the primary plot focus, while the story of Tuck and Clara acts as the perfect romantic tale and a blueprint for the younger couple.
In the novel, the enormous consequences of not choosing true love are reflected in the lives of Dawson and Amanda. Ever since he broke up with Amanda at the age of 18, over two decades earlier, Dawson has been living a half-life, unable to find fulfillment. He lives in the memory of his romance with Amanda and still carries the memories of the night he made love to her for the first and only time. His current life is colorless without any social interactions or interests. As he says later in the novel, Amanda was his “best friend” and “best self” (199) to whom he gave the best of himself, an idea reflected in the novel’s title. Hence, in the present, he is a shadow of his former self, cut off from the force that gave him love and life.
Similarly, Amanda, who chose to marry someone else and start a family, is unhappy with her life choices since leaving Dawson. She does not love Frank with the same passion with which she loved Dawson, and at a later point in the novel, she admits that the lack of true love in her marriage is the cause of Frank’s alcoholism. Amanda is plagued by self-doubt, thinking, “What if she’d married her one true love?” (30). She remembers that Dawson loved her with a “single-minded passion” (33) and regularly visits Tuck’s garage to relive those times, sensing “Dawson’s ghost” everywhere (33).
While Amanda and Dawson lead troubled lives due to their separation from each other, Tuck, who had a long, fulfilling marriage with Clara, deals with the loss of his true love by continuing to tend and expand the garden of wildflowers at Vandemere that he planted for her. The intense emotional and spiritual connection that Tuck has with Clara transcends Clara’s death, and her memories become a living presence that he could “see and hear […] as plain as day” (168).
The connection that the lovers share when they meet is further proof of the profound power of love. When Amanda and Dawson get together after two decades, they reconnect with each other almost instantly, as they were “picking up the thread of a long-interrupted conversation” (65). The realization that Dawson still loves Amanda makes her feel as though “she’d finally come home” (124) and that she is back in touch with her true self for the first time in many years. Similarly, on meeting Amanda again, Dawson is convinced that he can never love another woman. The novelist’s use of destiny and chance to bring about a plot twist, wherein after his death, Dawson’s heart is donated to Amanda’s son, exemplifies the transcendental power of true love even when the lovers cannot be together.
Guilt and Redemption
The novel explores the themes of guilt and redemption through Dawson, who lives with extreme guilt and regret. Though he has served his prison sentence for his unintentional killing of Dr. Bonner, he never lets go of the guilt he feels about the incident. Part of the reason Dawson is crushed by the event is that he never wanted to be a criminal like the rest of his family. Now, he feels that his destiny as a Cole is inescapable, and this gives him a poor self-image. He believes he is “ a pariah, a no-good Cole” (39) and that he can never give Amanda the life she deserves. Though Dawson believes his action is irredeemable, he tries to make up for it in a small way by anonymously sending money to Bonner’s family and monitoring their wellbeing. He is too invested in his guilt to feel wronged or acknowledge the unfairness of the sentence that he was given and asks Amanda not to feel sorry for him: “Feel sorry for Dr. Bonner’s family. Because of me, he never came home. Because of me, his kids grew up without a father. Because of me, his wife still lives alone” (64). While this is true on some level—Dawson did hit Bonner with his car—it was an accident, something that was neither planned nor foreseen. It is unfortunate that Dawson found himself in the role of an unintentional killer, but even Bonner’s wife eventually forgives him. Dawson’s dangerous, solitary life on the oil rig is a penance he has given himself, believing that he does not deserve happiness with Amanda or anyone else.
The Best of Me employs the supernatural as a metaphor for Dawson’s redemption. The vision he sees of the dark-haired stranger, which turns out to be the ghost of Dr. Bonner, is not a manifestation of his guilt or malevolence, as is often the case in literary works. The ghost actually helps Dawson and, therefore, represents the possibility of Dawson’s redemption. While following the ghost to the bar near the accident site, Dawson realizes the ghost has a purpose and that he is “supposed” (256) to save Alan’s life. In his death, Dawson redeems himself twice over, since in addition to saving Dr. Bonner’s son, he saves Amanda’s son’s life with his heart donation. By using supernatural elements and the concepts of fate and destiny, Nicholas Sparks plots Dawson’s death to both redeem him and give him closure in his relationship with Amanda by giving her the best part of himself—his heart.
Flawed Parent–Child Relationships
Conflicting relationships between parents and children are crucial in The Best of Me. Abusive parenting, miscommunications, and parental prejudices negatively influence the lives of the protagonists and create obstacles to their self-growth. Tommy Cole is an abusive father, Evelyn lets her prejudices determine Amanda’s life choices, and only Tuck is a model of compassionate parenting to Dawson and Amanda.
Tommy Cole beats Dawson when Dawson is growing up and extorts money from him when he started earning. The relationship lacks depth, as it mostly helps to characterize Dawson as someone who is different from the rest of his family, including his father. The relationship between Amanda and Evelyn is more nuanced and active throughout the story. Amanda initially views Evelyn as practical and insensitive, incapable of understanding Amanda’s emotional complexities. Amanda believes that Evelyn’s strictness is a result of her need to control Amanda. Evelyn’s dominating nature is effective; Amanda often finds it difficult to defend her actions in front of her mother and reverts to her teenage tactics of lying or remaining silent during their arguments.
Though Evelyn is not particularly sensitive, she can see that Amanda is going through a tough time. Her approach to parenting is to provide practical advice, and she believes that firm decisions are more important than sympathy in a parent–child relationship. Evelyn has resigned herself to the fact that she and Amanda can never be friends but is of the opinion that “friendship [is] far less important than family” (90). She is old-fashioned in that she doesn’t mind hurting Amanda’s feelings in the process of pointing out her mistakes.
The turning point in Amanda and Evelyn’s relationship occurs when, contrary to Amanda’s expectations, her mother chooses not to judge Amanda for her night with Dawson and tells her to trust herself. Amanda realizes that she has misjudged her mother and that she holds the same traditional values she criticizes in her mother. Their relationship gains a dimension of love and understanding when Evelyn rushes to Amanda’s side when Jared is hospitalized. She proves her emotional strength, as the grief-stricken family needs “someone who could support them, not someone who needed supporting” (266) like Amanda did at the time. Evelyn’s ability to take charge of the family, making sure that Amanda is eating and getting adequate rest, shows that Amanda can benefit from Evelyn’s decisiveness and strength.
The relationship Tuck shares with Amanda and Dawson is characterized by his concern for their wellbeing. In his letters to them, he writes that they are like his children, and he hopes that they live life without regrets. Because Tuck is not part of Amanda or Dawson’s families, he has a more objective view of them and sees them as individuals rather than children. Amanda feels that “Tuck Hostetler knew her, the real her, better than anyone in her current life” (31). However, the father–daughter relationship between Tuck and Amanda is limited, as Tuck is more of an idealized mentor rather than a practical, full-time presence in her life. For Dawson, Tuck is a surrogate father and mentor, who does not judge Dawson based on his family history. He provides Dawson with a safe place to work and live while not directly confronting the Coles for their behavior. Dawson has less contact with Tuck than Amanda does over the years, but Tuck remains the only person with whom Dawson corresponds, which is significant, given Dawson’s closed-off nature.
The fact that Tuck cannot decide Dawson and Amanda’s fates for them, despite how hard he works to get them together, shows that individuals have to make their own choices in life, regardless of whether they have positive or negative relationships with their parents. Both Dawson and Amanda eventually overcome the conflicts with their parents that limited them in their youth, but once those limits are removed, they have to face their own limitations and fears in deciding how to move forward with their lives.
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