- 27 Sep, 2020
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What literary techniques does Nicholas Sparks use in ‘The Notebook’ to convey romantic love?
This essay will explore some of the ways in which Nicholas Sparks uses literary techniques throughout The Notebook (1996) to convey romantic love. In order to offer an effective analysis of the portrayal of romantic love in The Notebook, this essay will first begin by exploring the importance of Noah as both a character and as the narrator, with particular attention to the ways in which his perspective offers a unique angle on the love story of the novel and how this affects the reader’s understanding of romantic love in the novel. The essay will then turn to the importance of setting in the novel, with a focus on the symbol of the house, and the allusions to Whitman’s perspective on nature. This will then feed into an analysis on the motif of literature through the novel, which will include a study not only of Whitman in the text, but also of the letters that Noah writes Allie, which are referenced throughout The Notebook, as well as the importance of notebooks and journals in Sparks’ depiction of romantic love in this text. Finally, this essay will turn to a study the mother, and how Noah’s understanding of her influences a reading of romantic love in The Notebook, before concluding with a brief study of some of the other notions of love that are depicted. Romantic love which is very idealized is the central focus of The Notebook, but this is not all: the novel also explores other aspects of love, such as friendship, and familial relationships, as well as more specific aspects of romantic love, such as loving someone in absentia, through sickness, and in different ages of someone’s life.