By Ellie Harshbarger

When I came across The Last Song for the first time it was the movie, not the book. Miley Cyrus played the lead role and just like every other girl my age that was the reason I had to watch it. I was nine years old at the time, so my understanding of the events occurring in the movie is drastically different from how I now view things while reading the novel. When I was younger I understood it mostly as a love story, but now that I am older I find that the romance is not where the true value of the story lies. This is a story about identity and how sometimes the concept of love can teach you new things about yourself. 

The story begins with a teenager named Ronnie who is forced to visit her father, whom she has barely spoken to in three years. In the divorce of her parents Ronnie had assumed her father had cheated and therefore shut him out. Ronnie has changed drastically in these three years apart from her father. She gave up her talent of playing the piano, something she used to do with her father. Ronnie has also gotten herself into trouble by hanging with the wrong crowd of kids and had a couple shoplifting incidents. When Ronnie arrives at her father’s for the summer, she does everything she can to avoid spending time with him. This exemplifies the most pressing conflict in this story, which is the one-sided relationship between Ronnie and her father. 

However, Ronnie’s behavior begins to change for the better when she meets Will. Will is a guy who seems to have his life together. He is smart, responsible, close with his family, and getting ready to head off to college in the fall. Will and Ronnie build a romantic relationship that teaches Ronnie about acceptance and communication. With these things Ronnie is then able to mend her relationship with her father. The relationship being fixed couldn’t have come any sooner as Ronnie learns her father has cancer and is not going to live much longer. 

With the story’s conflict being identified, readers can then turn their attention to the way that action unfolds. The slow building of Ronnie and Steve’s relationship is shown by the author’s narration of the story.  The story is told from a third person perspective with each chapter switching to a different character’s point of view.  However, Ronnie is still the stable point of reference.The story begins with their broken bond and ends tragically in the stitching of their bond. There is a scene close to the end of the novel where the perspective shifts back and forth from Ronnie and Steve as his cancer worsens. Steve’s cancer worsening strengthens his and Ronnie’s relationship. Readers are able to see the drastic shift in Ronnie’s attitude and treatment to her father. As for Steve, he is more open with sharing things with his daughter and more loving than distant at the beginning of the book. 

Time is a very important aspect in this story. Sparks’ throwing in the concept of time with their father-daughter relationship forces change. The days the two have together are now limited. The metaphoric idea that the years spent apart cannot be taken back is one way Sparks uses his narration skills to evoke emotion in the audience. This concept of time is followed all the way to the end of the story when Steve passes away and Ronnie must learn to cope with the fact that in the rest of her time on earth she won’t have a father.

The funeral scene in this book is a beautiful way of highlighting Ronnie and her father’s relationship. Throughout the summer Ronnie’s father worked on a new stained glass window for their town’s church. It took him months to make and he made it mostly with his son, Jonah, over Ronnie. That was their special project together. Unfortunately, Steve becomes too weak to finish it, leaving Jonah, Ronnie, and Will to finish the job. On the day of Steve’s funeral it rains the entire day. That is until Ronnie plays the song she finished writing for him. And at that moment in time “the piano stood in a waterfall of brilliant color, and for a moment Ronnie pictured her father sitting at the keys,” (Sparks 449). The light shining through the church windows is a symbolic way of her dad being there with her letting her know he likes how she finished writing his song. This is such a beautiful scene because Sparks ties together two ideas of love and loss. The rain in this scene is representing loss. The sun represents love and its glow. The fact that they are closely brought together goes to show that even when things are bad love is still beautiful and it will always be present. 

This story provides a relatableness that will intrigue many different audiences. The concepts of love and then loss are found all around us as humans. We go through each day loving many people and many things. Things like our friends and family, or our favorite drink or song. We also go through the day losing many things. Something small like money to buy food or something large like our time left on this earth. Reading the Last Song forces you as a reader to think about this. The words make you realize life can be hard and heavy. You mature and move through different stages of yourself. You evolve as a person. This is what Ronnie does over her summer with her father. You teach yourself how to let go, just like Steve when he learns he is not going to survive his cancer. And finally the most prominent thing this novel will teach you is how the relationships you build and lose shape you as a person. People come and go in your life for different reasons. They teach you lessons. Some for the better and some for the worse. 

This book’s metaphor of life being a song couldn’t be more perfect. The song in this movie relates to Steve’s life story. Steve composes the song himself with the help of Ronnie finishing it for him. In a way this shows that even when one person’s song is complete another person’s connection to them will continue on. Life is like a web of songs that all connect to one another in some way. This novel will deeply immerse you in this idea. 

Both the novel and movie are great, although, if you want to learn more about each individual character I would recommend the book over the movie. The movie focuses mostly on Ronnie whereas the book allows you to read through each character’s thoughts and feelings. There is just something special about the way Sparks is able to write about finding yourself and gaining love that makes this novel one of my all time favorites.