Dear John

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The two continue their relationship through romantic letters, then the events of 9/11 happen and John re-enlists. The distance and time apart put a toll on their relationship. And the questions of "what if...?" begin. Dear John: Love and Loyalty in Wartime America is published by Cambridge University Press Online ISBN:9781108913867 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108913867 New media: DEAR JOHN explores the role of constantly changing technologies in both facilitating intimacy and undermining it in wartime. Has the digital era made it harder or easier to endure separation caused by deployment? And how persuasive is the widely shared view that bad news cuts deeper the faster it arrives—that an electronic Dear John is more damaging than one delivered by mail?

I laughed. I cried. I felt nearly all the emotions John and Savannah felt. That is the sign of an incredible book. The way Sparks wrote the novel engulfed me in the story to the point where I had to set out time during the day to get things done, otherwise I would have just read this book all day. There's so much I want to say to you, but I'm not sure where I should begin. Should I start by telling you that I love you? Or that the days I've spent with you have been the happiest in my life? Or that in the short time I've known you, I've come to believe that we were meant to be together? I could say all those things and all would be true, but as I reread them, all I can think is that I wish I were with you now, holding your hand and watching your elusive smile.I also learned that it's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief...lessens. It may not ever go away completely, but after a while it's not overwhelming." In Dear John historian Susan L. Carruthers details the history of the “Dear John” letter and explores wartime relationships and breakdowns from multiple perspectives—civilian and military, male and female, historical and contemporary. Using a broad range of research and sources, including personal letters, declassified documents, press reports, psychiatric literature, movies, and popular music, Carruthers also shows how the armed forces and civilian society have attempted to weaponize romantic love in pursuit of martial ends, from World War II through Korea and Vietnam to today’s “forever wars” in the Middle East. The book started with angry rebel John getting tired of his life and joining army,I must say his character was really strong and intense,incomprehensible in the beginning but lovable. He meets a girl named Savannah during his holidays and falls in love with her right away. Savannah changes John's life in the ways one can change a human. But unfortunately John has to leave at the end of his break, their keep correspondence through letters and phone calls but Savannah grows tired of waiting for him and falls in love with someone else,but John loves Savannah from the depth of his soul,he loved her to the limit where a human can love another human. I hate Savannah for being so vain and forgetting him,how could she have forgotten all those days,i seriously can't understand. Who “wrote” the Dear John?: Most of what we know about Dear Johns comes from what men have had to say about women’s break-up notes. In a very real sense, it’s true to say that men invented the “Dear John” and authored apocryphal specimens in hugely different styles. Rather than seeing the “Dear John” as a female epistolary genre, we should think of it more as a male oral tradition . So, although Dear John is about women’s letter-writing, it’s also very much about men’s story-telling. Part Three shows the reality of life. Both having to deal with heartache after the illness and loss of loved ones. The difficulty of trying to cope with such life altering situations. And where people’s true colours are shown. What would you do for a friend you loved, but could no longer be in love with?

Now I'm a more cynical 24 year old, and a lot of the issues and relationship troubles for John and Savannah resonate with me a lot more than they did for my younger, inexperienced self. When John returned to North Carolina their chemistry was still strong, but less so than it was in the beginning. They fight a little because John doesn't like her taking him to see her friends all of the time. He got real mad one evening when she came home late from teaching. That night, they make love for the first time, and the spark is rekindled. His father was pursuing graduate studies at University of Minnesota and University of Southern California, and the family moved a great deal, so by the time Sparks was eight, he had lived in Watertown, Minnesota, Inglewood, California, Playa del Rey, California, and Grand Island, Nebraska, which was his mother's hometown during his parents' one year separation. Fr. John Dear has been arrested and jailed over 80 times in acts of nonviolent civil disobedience against war and nuclear weapons in the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. King, especially his Dec. 7, 1993, Plowshares action in North Carolina where he hammered on a nuclear weapon to fulfill Isaiah’s oracle, “They shall beat swords into plowshares and study war no more.” For that action, he faced over twenty years in prison, spent some nine months in jail, and recorded his experience in his book, Peace Behind Bars.OK, so...I finally finished. Like a lot of other people, I read this simply because I saw the preview for the movie and I HAVE to read a book before I see the film adaptation. In this case, I really wish I wasn't so anal retentive. This book needs to have a different title like maybe The Rehash or The Tragic Tragedy . Seriously how many times do we have to hear about the same scenes?!?!