A Walk To Remember
by Nicholas Sparks
Table of Contents
Chapter 5 to Chapter 8
Chapter 5
Landon is given the role of Tom after he speaks to Miss Garber. Practice takes place in class until everyone has his or her part down smoothly. Only then can the actors practice in the playhouse, the reason being that the props in the playhouse are delicate and cannot be mishandled.
Landon’s sense of guilt and honor begins to subside, and he deliberately slacks off and does not try to memorize his lines. He is teased by his friends. They say that he has a crush on Jamie and that she is his girlfriend. When he denies it, they say that she is his fiancée. He tells them that the only reason he is in the play is that Miss Garber forced him to do it. This is a lie that comes back to haunt him, of course.
One night, Landon, Eric and others are hanging out at Cecil’s eating hush puppies when Jamie approaches. She seems to have a plan to help “motivate” Landon. She brags to the others about how nice Landon has been for volunteering to act in the play. Eric pounces on the revelation and tells Jamie that Landon is so nice that he was hoping that they could perform the play for the orphans. Jamie likes the idea, since she regularly helps out at the orphanage. Landon, knowing that he has been found out by his friends, buckles under Eric’s insistence and agrees to perform for the orphans. He spends all of the next day memorizing his lines like he is supposed to.
In this chapter, it is still unclear whether or not Jamie knows what she is doing by approaching Landon in front of his friends. She appears to be genuine and direct, but it is possible that she is trying to manipulate Landon into taking his role in the play more seriously. At any rate, her humiliation of him in front of his friends does just the thing, and he is forced to take his part more seriously—which means that he must begin to memorize his lines.
Chapter 6
Jamie and Landon tell Miss Garber about their plans for the orphans. She...
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