Love and Hope Edit

Jerry Wu
Ms. Guarino
English II
Feb.17.2016
Love and Hope
Do you believe that love can change people? As we all know, Love is important to everyone, because it is like the hope which always saves and helps people. But, how does love save people and help them? Love lightens people's hope, and formed a new perspective on their life. In the novel Me and You, the two main characters, Lorenzo and Olivia started to have hope after they felt the love and caring from each other. Similar to Lorenzo and Olivia, Ronnie in the movie The Last Song became open-minded and found her way after she fell in love.  All of these three character were used to be very rebellious and antisocial. However, love has the power to change someone from rebellious and antisocial to caring and open-minded because of the love they felt from others.
In the story Me and You, the time staying with Olivia caused Lorenzo to change from being selfish and antisocial to caring. Before that, he did not know how to make good relationship. He had no real friends, and he pretended to be like those bad kids in his school. His mom felt satisfied about him for having “friends” in school. Because of that, Lorenzo lied to his mom that he went on a ski week with friends. In fact, he was hiding in the basement for the whole ski week. While Lorenzo was hiding, he met his half sister accidentally. At first, they disliked each others and had several arguments. However, when Lorenzo saw that Olivia was suffering, he felt sorry about her and he wanted to help her. It was the first time Lorenzo cared about other people. While Lorenzo was helping Olivia, “[he] felt something [he]’d never felt before, [he] felt alive. And yet [he] knew that beyond the door the world was waiting for [him], and [he] would be able to take others like [he] was one of them”(Ammaniti 143). “Alive” means that Lorenzo was no more that boy who was under a mask, hiding in his fake world and making unreal friends. He realized that if he care about others, others would care about him. Now he felt reborn that he found the way how he could fit in his school and how he could make real friends. Because of Olivia, Lorenzo had the hope to make friend in the future.
Love always gives people hope. Not only Lorenzo was changed, Olivia also had hope as she felt the love and caring from Lorenzo. She used to be rebellious because of the divorce of her parents. She thought dad did not like her and she did not felt the love from him. She became rebellious and she had a lot of troubles during her life: she ran away from schools, she failed all the test. Every time, dad got her out of the trouble by using the money instead of love. As the result for that Olivia felt hopeless:"thank you once again but from now on even if you feel the urge to help me out, repress it. You are the master of repression and silence"(Ammaniti  80). She gave up the hope that dad would care more about her, and she became more rebellious. She even took drugs. However, withdrawing from drugs is painful, while Olivia was suffered. Lorenzo gave her place to live and helped her find some medicine. She used to be hopeless because nobody care about her and nobody help her. Now, the love from Lorenzo made Olivia became more open-minded. She made a promised with Lorenzo that she would never took drugs again. She started to have hope about her future as she mentioned that, “[she] had a sort of boyfriend who lives in Bali. [She] wanted to be her woman for real. If he wants [her]”(Ammaniti 144). The love from Lorenzo was like the hope for Olivia, that she became open-minded and wanted to find her way.
The movie "The Last Song" also talked about a girl Ronnie who also had divorced family. In the movie, she fell in love with a boy Will, and the love between each other stopped her from being rebellious and hatred for her father. As Ronnie's parent divorced, dad left her and they never contacted each other any more. Ronnie used to have a lot of talent on music, however she is not doing any music since the day dad left. "Brain even bought a electric piano, she won't go near it. Grades were in the toilet, it's a miracle she graduated from high school. And she doesn't have one friend without a pieced of something"(The Last Song). It seems like Ronnie was being rebellious and hiding herself as dad had left. She supposed to be a successful girl because of her music talent. However, as dad had left, she hided herself and became antisocial; She did bad at school; she hided her music talent and stopped doing music; she even refused to attend the famous musical school: Juilliard School. During the summer, as she was sent to the island which her dad lived, she met a boy named Will and she fell in love with him. The relationship between each other helper Ronnie to become open-minded. When she first came to the island, she did not want to talked to others, she was easy to get mad, and she wanted to go home. After she met Will, her life became more interesting. They took care of the turtle egg together, and they worked together. Smile started to appear on Ronnie's face. As Ronnie became more open-minded, her relationship with her dad also got better, and she restarted doing music. She changed from hatred to caring. "[She] was on the way to buy the dress, and...[she] gives the money away"(The Last Song). From that I saw that Ronnie became helpful and she even used the money which was important to her to help others. She used to be selfish and did not care about others feeling. She is easy to get mad and argue with other. Now, she was completely different as she had changed because of the love. The relationship, between Ronnie and Will proved that love is like the hope and it has the power to change people. 
All of those three characters's experience showed that love had the ability to change someone. They were similar, which they all changed from rebellious to open-minded. Both Lorenzo and Ronnie used to be anti-social because of their parents. However, after they meet someone and started to love, they soon became sociable  and start to care about others. Not only between Lorenzo and Ronnie, there are also some similarities between Ronnie and Olivia. As they both have a divorced family, they were both being rebellious and easy to become angry. Both of them failed tests, and had no friends in school. Both of them was hatred to her father because they did not feel love from him. After Olivia meet Lorenzo and Ronnie met Will, they started to became open-minded. Olivia wanted to find her way and she wanted to married with her boyfriend. Ronnie rebuilt the relationship with her father as she started to understand him and care about him. However, sadly, both of them did not have a good ending. Olivia died after ten years because of the drugs and the medicine she took. As soon as Ronnie fixed the relationship with her father, she found out her father had cancer and would be died soon. Both the novel "Me and You" and the movie "The Last Song" showed the process about how love has changed people though they end sadly.