Jamie Lived at the End of A Walk to Remember, Right?

When I was in college, my friend Tope introduced me to Nicholas Sparks. No, not in person, I meant his book, A Walk to Remember.

I remember reading the first chapter on a Saturday afternoon, taking a nap, then waking up and continuing the book only to never let go of it and finishing it that same day. I loved the book so much! Like Landon, the narrator, I unexpectedly fell in love with Jamie, too, despite her making him promise not to. Then of course I cried a lot when I found out she was sick because I did not see it coming.

The next school day I returned the book to Tope, gushing about it and saying, “But I’m really glad she didn’t die!”

He gave me a blank look. “Huh? What are you talking about? Did we read the same book?”

“That ending!” I explained. “Miracles can happen! It meant she lived, right?”

He didn’t agree. That eventually sparked one of the most heated debates in our class, as we started asking other people who had read to book to give their opinion, and even resorted to telling people, “Here’s a book, read it, and let me know what you think happened in the end.”

The result was this: most guys interpreted it to mean Jamie died, while most girls thought she didn’t. I don’t know if this is a gender divide. Are girls just more optimistic and guys more realistic?

But anyway, let me explain why I jumped to my conclusion.

First, there were these lines in the latter half of the book.

But this was happening forty years ago, and I knew what that meant.
Only a miracle could save her.

I began to pray for a miracle.
They supposedly happen all the time, and I’d read about them in newspapers. People regaining use of their limbs after being told they’d never walk again, or somehow surviving a terrible accident when all hope was lost. 

I waited for the miracle.
It hadn’t come.

I know some of you may wonder if I was doing it out of pity. Some of the more cynical may even wonder if I did it because she’d be gone soon anyway and I wasn’t committing much. The answer to both questions is no. I would have married Jamie Sullivan no matter what happened in the future. I would have married Jamie Sullivan if the miracle I was praying for had suddenly come true. I knew it the moment I asked her, and I still know it today.

And then finally, the last lines of the book:

It is now forty years later, and I can still remember everything from that day. I may be older and wiser, I may have lived another life since then, but I know that when my time eventually comes, the memories of that day will be the final images that float through my mind. I still love her, you see, and I’ve never removed my ring. In all these years I’ve never felt the desire to do so.

I breathe deeply, taking in the fresh spring air. Though Beaufort has changed and I have changed, the air itself has not. It’s still the air of my childhood, the air of my seventeenth year, and when I finally exhale, I’m fifty-seven once more. But this is okay. I smile slightly, looking toward the sky, knowing there’s one thing I still haven’t told you: I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen.

Actually, I started smiling the moment I read that line about him never removing his ring. He never felt the desire to do so because he was still married to her! She was still alive! Then the “miracles” line confirmed it, and I finished the book with a happy smile (and sticky tear stains on my face from having bawled like a baby earlier).

But you know what? I am not alone thinking this way! According to Nicholas Sparks’s website, this is his most frequently asked question, which he addresses here. You can read what he said below.

As I mentioned in the notes, this is the most frequently asked question I receive. As far as I can tell, about 70% of the people think Jamie passed away, another 30% believe she lived, and when asking the question, they offer ‘‘proof’’ for their reasoning. Isn’t it said that good books inspire debate?

There are a number of things that I have to explain before I get into the answer so you can understand my reasoning. Part of it goes back to Message in a Bottle. In a nutshell, while many readers loved the ending of that novel, a great many were furious with me for it. Really furious. This was on my mind while writing Walk, and part of me thought that if I killed off another major character, my readers would never forgive me.*

Nonetheless, when I started the novel, I knew that Jamie was going to die. Every page, every scene, every chapter was written with that idea and it continued to proceed that way right up until the end of the novel, when the time came to write those words. But strangely, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t. Why? Because by that time, I’d grown to love Jamie Sullivan. I marveled at her strength and faith, and I was proud of everything for which she stood. And I didn’t want her to die.

So I found myself in a dilemma. Also, keep in mind that the story was also inspired by my sister, who was very much alive as I neared the end of the novel. But because of all that I had written with her death in mind, because she was growing weaker and weaker throughout the story, it would have been dishonest (and frankly, very manipulative), to have Jamie suddenly cured. I could imagine some readers reaching the end and thinking, if that was the case, why the big build-up with her sickness? Others might close the book and think the entire novel was believable … up until that point. I didn’t want either of those impressions of the novel.

So what was I to do? I didn’t want her to die, and couldn’t write those words. Yet, plainly I couldn’t let her live, either. I opted for the only solution, the solution that best described the feeling I had about my gravely ill sister at that point: namely, that I hoped she would live.

That’s the ending, folks. I wanted readers to finish with the hope that Jamie lived. As to whether she actually lived or died, it’s ambiguous and purposely meant to be that way. If you wanted Jamie to live, she lived. If you knew that Jamie would die, she died.

As for me (and I’m not the final say—I wrote the characters, but readers know them just as well as I do), I thought there was a good chance that Jamie lived. At least, I hoped so.