“Love Story” – Chapters VII – XXII

After Ollie proposes marriage to Jenny, the next step is visiting of the parents. First they go to visit Ollie’s parents. When Jenny enters the mansion she is very surprised because she didn’t know that Ollie would be that rich. Once they enter the house all the trophies and different pictures of almost every hall in Harvard hanging on wall amaze Jenny. The visit goes well, but Ollie’s parents didn’t seem so pleased that the girl was not on the same social status as Ollie and that her father was a baker from Rhode Island.

Oliver Barret III invites Ollie for lunch and tells him his impressions about the girl. He seemed to admire her, and her achievement considering her background…But Ollie misunderstands that and that’s when he decides to walk away from that life and begin his own.  

The story continues with a visit to Jenny’s father, Phil. The visit was O.K. according to Jenny but what the father didn’t like is that they were not that religious and didn’t want a priest on their wedding or even the wedding to take place on a catholic church.  Finally they get married. They write their own vowels and the school’s chaplain marries them.

They move to a new house, Jenny gets a job, and Ollie graduates. Things start to get better for them, but when they receive an invitation for Oliver Barret IV 60^th birthday, they argue and Jenny ‘leaves’. When Jenny comes back, she says a powerful sentence: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” and they’re back on track. Ollie finishes 3^rd on Harvard Law School and gets a job with a very high salary. While it appeared that everything is getting better and better, a visit to a doctor tells Ollie that Jenny is very sick and will die soon. At this point the story connects with the beginning paragraph, the tragic paragraph revealing the actual death of a girl that loved Mozart, Bach, Beatles, and Ollie.  

Ollie tries everything in his power to get her better, he even asks for more money from his father, but none of this helps. Approaching the last hours of her life, Jenny tries to make Ollie feel better by telling him that he was the only thing she needed, and not Paris or music. Her last wish for her husband was to be strong and take care of her father. She dies after saying “Thanks, Ollie”.  The story ends with Ollie repeating Jenny’s powerful words on the first argument that they had, when he says to his father “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” and bursts into tears on his father’s arms.