While reading this book, my eyes were suffering from dryness. So I wanted to give up reading it. And I felt really depressed, not only because I had to stop reading Dear John, but I had to quit on reading for the eyes’ problem for a while OR for an indefinite time, whoever knew for how long, which made life here more boring and vacuous. I was the sort of person who couldn’t stand life like that. A day without a book or learning something was like a relationship without romance.
Only after my doctor told me that it’s no big deal did I finally relieved and set my heart at rest. I made myself strictly follow the doc’s instruction by granting the eyes a break and applying some eye drops. After 3 days, I picked Dear John up again, and kept on going.
It’s an entertaining and moving story. The way how they met and how they developed the relationship were outstanding and somehow unrealistic in a country like America where openness, freedom and sexual liberation were so in. However, the love between the two protagonists was incredibly delicate, subtle and sensitive. I couldn't even believe such John, who was wild and impetuous when young, could be so mature, considerate and gentle. He joined the army due to impulse, and volunteered to fight in the Iraq war after the 9.11 event. So problems popping out like a bubble made the love more vulnerable. Phone calls, Emails, letters, once-a-year-meetings were all shadowless in the face of distance. Can true love real stand the distance, which is a question only the person who is in it knows.
From my point of view, John was really a good man. He was totally dedicated to his lover partly because he’s enlisted in the army based in Germany, but mostly he loved his girlfriend so much. But his girlfriend was not the same. She was in her own country, having lots of friends to hang out. Finally, she couldn’t bear the loneliness any more, and choose to say bye-bye to her boyfriend who was fighting in the Iraq war. That’s cruel and brutal. At least did that after the war. She could have killed him.
The break-up letter made John volunteered for the most needed, most dangerous and most intricate missions. Lots of his comrade-in-arms died, but he survived unluckily. After the Iraq war, he prolonged his enlistment.
Still thinking of his girlfriend, he went to look for her, only finding out that she’d already got married. After talking for a while, he knew that her husband was hospitalized and seriously sick with not very much time left. Later John donated all the money, which he inherited from his father who died from heart disease while his son was still fighting in thea war, to her husband anonymously. So this is true love!
Another theme in the book was about John’s love to his father. I’m moved by his love. And I’m moved by this book which I wanted to give up in the middle. It turned out that it’s worth my time even though my eyes suffered.