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The Notebook And How It Affects A Person's Life

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I spent a lot of time considering what movie I would watch to write this essay. I listed off the movies that I would like to watch again, and then I decided on The Notebook. I didn’t really think I could write about adolescence or children, so I thought that, maybe, I could write about the elderly. The love story that The Notebook tells is truly amazing. I love watching this movie, although I cry every time I watch it. The Notebook is about an elderly man that tells the story of his life with the one he loves the most, his wife. He is telling the story to his wife, who has Alzheimer’s Disease, which is a degenerative disease that affects a person’s memory. She has no recollection of him or their life together, or even her own children. …show more content…

My favorite theorist was Erik Erikson, as it is my opinion that he was the one who was closest to explaining our developmental stages. He has eight stages that he talks about. I will be discussing his eighth and final stage, integrity vs despair. Erikson explains that in late adulthood, the 60’s onward, is a time when older adults look back and reflect on their lives. His theory states that when they look back on their lives and find a life well spent and have a positive perspective about it then they have integrity (Santrock, 2013, p. 17). If they look back on their life and have a negative outlook about it or find doubt or gloom then they have the despair that Erikson talks about (Santrock, 2013, p. 17). When Noah, the elderly man who read the story to his wife, looks back and reflects on his life while telling the story to his wife, he has a positive outlook and knows he has had a life well spent, especially a life well spent with his wife, Allie. There was a time in his life when I am sure he wasn’t happy, because Allie had moved away and for seven years they didn’t see each other and the next time that Noah had seen her was when she was engaged with another man. He was miserable without her and had wrote her for a whole year and never heard anything back. But, even though he had that moment in his life, in the end he got Allie and looking back he had a very productive life; Noah had integrity. Allie has Alzheimer’s Disease, so she doesn’t remember the life that

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