Lao Tzu once said “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” While reading The Last Song I noticed this reoccurring theme of love. Ronnie loves not only Will, but her father and her little brother. In the beginning you are introduced to this teenage girl that seems so cold and maybe not even capable of love, but as the book progresses you learn that Ronnie can love so deeply and does love so deeply. As Ronnie’s summer goes on she reconnects with her dad and from her dad’s love she gains strength and from learning to love him again she gains courage. I think that without love this book would not be near the same, because it is truly all about love. This can be connected with the real world because real acts of love happen no matter how small or rare, they happen.

One act of love I found in the news is that a father with terminal cancer wrote his daughter 826 notes for her to read because he might not always be there like he wishes he could to talk to her, help her through things, and to tell her that he loved her. Ronnie’s dad did something somewhat similar in the novel although he was not writing the letters because he was terminally ill, but his intentions were the same he wanted Ronnie to know that he was there for her, he still cared, and that he loved her and although at first she ignored the letters she came to realize how really important they were later on, just as I’m sure the daughter of the terminally ill man cherishes her notes from her father. Ronnie’s dad also wrote music on the piano this was a way for him and Ronnie to relate and this later also became very important to her the music he wrote is similar to the letters because it was something he left behind for her after he passed away. All three of these both real and fictional show love coming from a father to a daughter. I’m sure it was a depressing task for the man to write the notes for his daughter, because it had to make him think of what was coming, but he did it for her so she would know how much she was really loved just as Ronnie knew her father’s love from the letters and music.

The second act of love I found that relates to the novel is on Earth Day New England Aquarium released about 31 juvenile turtles into the ocean in Jacksonville, Florida that they had collected washed up on a beach in early winter and knew they would become hypothermic if put back in the water so they kept them to rerelease them later on. They saved the turtles lives and many of them were endangered species. This relates to the novel because when Ronnie first arrives at her father’s house on the beach she finds an abandoned nest of not hatched sea turtle eggs, she finds out that lots of things like to take the eggs and more than likely without the mother turtle they will not make it to when they hatch and enter the ocean. Ronnie shows love to the sea turtles by making a barrier around the eggs to protect them from any predators, she also sleeps out next to them even though it is not really something she would do if she didn’t have to protect them and when nothing is really done to protect them she pushes on harder trying to get them protection as quick as possible. She never stops caring or abandons the turtle eggs. The New England Aquarium could have easily released the turtles into the ocean but, they did the same as Ronnie they cared for them until they were ready to be released although this act of love both in the book and in real life doesn’t directly show love to another human it shows love to the turtles that were saved. I learned from this that love doesn’t just have to be from human to human, but it can be from human to animal, or even just human to the planet.

One last act of love that I found that really happen was a murderer was caught and convicted, but the victim’s family didn’t act as most families would. They did not show anger or hatred for the man, and they did not wish the worst for him they forgave him for his actions. Forgiveness is shown in The Last Song from Ronnie. Ronnie was not wishing to forgive her dad at first, in fact she had a lot of anger toward him, but in the end she found the strength and courage to forgive him for his actions because she had love for him and knew he was truly sorry. Ronnie also had to learn to forgive Will because he had lied to her about how the church burnt down when many people thought it was Ronnie’s father so she was very upset that he had covered for someone that actually burnt the church down while her father had to take the blame. Both the murder victim’s family and Ronnie forgave for one reason. The reason was love. Without love there would be no forgiveness and if Ronnie had not forgave her father and Will the story would have been much different.

Overall I think the universal theme of The Last Song was love, and love is real. The novel displayed many different acts of love that could really happen to people. The world wouldn’t be the same without love just as the novel wouldn’t be the same without love.