47 pages • 1 hour read
The Best of Me
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Symbols & Motifs
Tuck’s Garage
Tuck’s garage is a symbol of Dawson’s past—his only true home, a refuge, and the place where his romance with Amanda blossomed. The garage’s association with the past is connoted by the “dusty fan,” “rusting tire iron,” and other scattered mechanical parts (47). The connection to the past is further shown by the classic cars that Tuck restored there.
The garage is where Dawson accesses and relives his past. This aspect is complemented by the garage’s status as a place preserved in time: On seeing the garage after two decades, Dawson comments that it looks exactly that same. The garage still bears the marks of Dawson’s life as a high school boy in love. The workbench, with Amanda and Dawson’s initials carved into it, is still there. The word “forever” etched into the bench assumes a larger significance as a foreshadowing of Dawson and Amanda’s togetherness even after Dawson’s death. For Amanda too, the garage is a place of unresolved memories, where she occasionally “poke[d] around” to “figure out what the past really meant to her” (192).
The garage becomes a kind of time warp where Dawson’s past and present meet. This mixing of the past and present is reflected in Dawson seeing Amanda “staring back at him from across the years” (44) when he first arrives at the garage after Tuck’s death. Similarly, the more time they spend together in the garage, the more Amanda and Dawson revert to their former romantic selves. Hence, the garage acts as an incubator, allowing Dawson and Amanda to feel the emotions of the past and recognize the power of their love for each other.
The Vandemere Cottage
Tuck’s cottage at Vandemere, along with its garden of wildflowers, is his labor of love for his deceased wife, Clara. The cottage, with its quaint weathered exteriors, surroundings of natural beauty, and idyllic garden is a symbol of the romantic ideal to which Amanda and Dawson aspire. By describing the garden as a “vision of heaven” (156), Nicholas Sparks deploys the classic trope of lovers finding a hideaway in the seclusion of nature, far away from the mundanity of their everyday lives.
The cottage is a space where Amanda and Dawson can become lovers and forget the constraints of their present lives. In the romantic setting of the cottage, Amanda admits that she has never loved Frank the way she loves Dawson, leading to physical and emotional intimacy between Amanda and Dawson. When she catches a glimpse of her reflection next to Dawson’s, she thinks about the possibility of their future together. However, the cottage, like the garage, is a space frozen in time; Amanda soon realizes that the feelings she experiences there cannot translate into the real world, as she is unable to break her marriage vows. Thus, Tuck once again provides the couple with an idealized environment in which they can play out their love story because neither has such a space in real life.
The Stingray
The half-repaired classic Stingray that Dawson finds in Tuck’s garage becomes a symbol of Amanda and Dawson’s relationship that Tuck hopes to repair by having them spend a weekend together, carrying out his last wishes. The parallels between the car and their relationship are frequently highlighted in the story. As soon as Amanda and Dawson enter the garage together, Dawson ironically comments that the car needs only minor repairs and that Tuck “was just waiting for […] parts to arrive” (49). The next day, when Dawson begins to “piece the engine back together” (122), Amanda watches him, just like old times. They symbolically begin putting their old romance back together, “filling in pieces of their lives and exchanging opinions” (122). Once the car is repaired, Amanda is tempted to imagine a future together with Dawson, “the kind of life she […] always really wanted” (122).
This symbolism is extended when they drive the Stingray to Tuck’s cottage in Vandemere. The description of Dawson driving the car—starting the engine, changing gears, negotiating curves, and so on—reflects the steady progression of intimacy that both of them feel throughout the journey. The drive is not easy; as they near the cottage, the path gets more treacherous with overgrowth, fallen tree trunks and low-hanging branches, connoting the difficulty of actualizing their romance. The fate of the Stingray also mirrors the fate of Amanda and Dawson’s relationship: It gets brutally destroyed by Dawson’s cousin Ted, who later murders Dawson, crushing any possibility of Dawson and Amanda having a future together.
The Heart Transplant
The heart transplant is the most powerful symbol in the story because it ties together all the novel’s storylines and thematic threads. Sparks exploits the idea of the heart as a symbol of love to show Dawson literally giving his heart to Amanda: After Dawson’s death, Amanda’s son, Jared, receives Dawson’s heart as an organ donation, and the transplant saves his life. Though Dawson did not intentionally give his heat to Jared, the timing of his death and Jared’s car accident plays into the theme of fate, as if, one way or another, Dawson would find a way to give Amanda his heart. This act resonates with Dawson’s earlier words that he gave Amanda the best of him. Having Dawson’s heart live on in Jared’s body is a symbol of Dawson’s transcendence of death and his everlasting love for Amanda. For Amanda, the heart transplant means that she no longer has to choose between Dawson and her family; the person in her family she loves most—her son—now has the heart of the man she loved most. In a way, the transplant also rewrites the history of Amanda marrying Frank, as now her son has a biological link to Dawson, who in another version of their lives could have been Jared’s father.
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By Nicholas Sparks
