The Choice
By: Nicholas Sparks
Setting
At the very beginning of this story, Travis Parker is in the parking lot of a hospital with flowers in hand. As a reader, you know nothing about the reason for the flowers or even the visit to the hospital. As the prologue ends and the first chapter begins, you are sent into a flashback eleven years in the past. The setting of most of the story is in a small town in North Carolina. This is a beautiful water front town that is as peaceful as can be, for the most part. The main character seems to be very content with the location of his home and his life overall. During part two of the story, you are taken back to present time, 2007, and are back in the hospital parking lot, where all of a sudden the happy setting is directly changed to gloomy and sad.
Main Characters
- Travis Parker: One of the two main characters and narrators of the novel. He has a good job, great friends, and a pretty much perfect life. It becomes even more perfect when he meet the girl of his dreams
- Gabby Holland: The second main character and narrator of this novel. She moves into Beaufort, North Carolina early in this novel and realizes that it may just be her new home forever.
- Stephanie Parker: Travis's sister and eventually one of Gabby's best friends. She immediately takes a liking to Gabby and knows that she is the one for her big brother.
- Kevin: Gabby's boyfriend at the beginning of the book. He is a successful man that loves to golf, and the reason Gabby moved to Beaufort.
- Liard: One of Travis's best friends, who is married to Allison.
- Joe: Another one of Travis's best friends that is married to Megan.
- Matt: Travis's third best friend that is married to Liz.
- Christine: Travis and Gabby's eight year old daughter
- Lisa: Travis and Gabby's six year old daughter
- Gretchen: Gabby's nurse through a large part of her injury and hospital/nursing home stay.
Major Issues
- One of the main issues in the story is that Gabby has a boyfriend and has to act like she is uninterested in Travis.
- We know at the beginning that Travis is at a hospital, and later find out that Gabby has gotten into an awful accident.
- Gabby is in a coma and we do not know if she will ever come out of it, because she has been in it for over three months.
When Was I Surprised?
I was most surprised when I found out that the reason Travis was at the hospital was because his wife was in a coma. Gabby worked at the hospital and the beginning made it sound like the couple was just in a fight and separated, but finding out this news was a little crazy and scary. The reader does not know if she will live or not.
Favorite Part?
My favorite part was when Travis made his "Choice". While Gabby was working at the hospital she had met a man whose wife was in a coma for many months, and eventually was move to a nursing home because they were not sure if she would ever wake up. Sounds like deja vu, right? Well, Gabby became close with the husband because he was frequently visiting his wife (Just like Travis) and making sure to keep her company. The husband became very aged in the short time from the stress and actually turned into an angry person. The children got out of control and became criminals from the stress of their mother being in a coma. Gabby had told Travis that if for some reason they were ever in this situation, she wanted him to tell them to let her die, because she did not want to have her family go through such things. Travis agreed not thinking that it would ever happen to his wife. One night can change everything, though, and it definitely did. One car accident caused Gabby to go into a deep coma. Travis was of course in an emotional state, along with his two daughters. It go to the 3 month point where he had to make the choice of keeping faith in her ability to wake up or to pull the feeding tube and let his wife starve and die while in the coma. He remembers what his wife's wishes were but also realizes that living without her would be awful too. He finally decides what to do one day, and his choice totally changes his point of view.