Journal Blog #1

For this cycle of Lit circles of decisions, I am doing the book "The Last Song" By Nicholas Sparks. In the novel, I am at the point of where we readers are just getting to know the characters and how they got to where they are in the setting of the book. The essential question that I chose is "How do one's decisions impact others?" This question relates to the book "The Last Song" because the main character Ronnie made a decision to not speak to her father for 3 years. The reason was because he left her family and marriage in a rut while trying to pursue his music career. The decision of not speaking to her father for that long not only affected her father, but also herself, mother and brother. Not speaking to her father also lead to bad behaviours towards her mother and started to hang out with the 'wrong' crowd. She is in denial of missing her father and she made that decison to stop something that she really loved: playing the piano. "All right. how about this? I'm not going to play the piano for you." This quote is the first thing that Ronnie says to her father and as she still is as angry as she was 3 years ago. This storyline connects to a family member of mine, my cousin, who had a lot of problems with her father as a teen. Although the only difference between the story and my cousin is that my aunt and uncle didn't split up. So my cousin and my uncle never got along at all ever and finally when she moved out she never spoke to him again because she never really understood the fathers point of view. Like Ronnie, my cousin was misunderstood and did the things she did to get attention. As I continue to read the novel "The Last Song", the book really intrigues me on the decisions and actions that Ronnie takes and I hope to see the development of the character and she makes more decisions.