“What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died?”...
…That she’s the timeless Jenny Cavilleri from the simplest yet most ever-lasting story of love ever written. She’s the first love of Oliver Barrett IV whose life started with her death. She’s innocence personified whose end forced the toughest to bring tears to their dry eyes and whose tears brought warmth into people’s hearts and souls. She’s Jenny…of Love Story.
“Love means not ever having to say you’re sorry”
Oliver and Jenny’s love was not just that, but also about never leaving each other’s side through the lowest phases in life. They found themselves in each other’s company when the intelligent music major Jenny shrewdly and bluntly asked Oliver to ask her out for coffee and since then, they never looked back. Considering them, “made for each other” isn’t just a fact, but it’s a fact written in stone!
Oliver Barrett IV, a filthy rich son of a filthy rich father, was far from proud of his parentage and specially abhorred his father for being the “Old Stonyface” that he called him. Jenny on the other hand came from a humble background of an Italian descent and only had her father (whom she openly addressed by his first name, Phil). A diversity of this sort was bound to create obstacles for Jenny and Oliver to unite, but when has true love ever been stopped by superficial concerns like wealth and status?
Once decided that their lives would only be spent with each other, Jenny and Oliver get occupied in setting up their own world. Love doesn’t only require being together and saying “I love you”, but having the determination to keep their love alive through day in and day out of everyday nuances.
A love story doesn’t end at marriage, but deepens with the bond and promises to spend a lifetime together. In Jenny and Oliver’s case however, a lifetime of love was filled with be devotion for each other, but lacked length…
The pain of losing a person you love is magnanimous, but it is even more heightened if you have the knowledge about it and have to endear it helplessly while at the same time pretending to be clueless and let life, the little which is left, go on as usual. At a time like this, all Oliver could do was not cry…even though every muscle in his body ached of pain, of desperation, of helplessness, he could not cry in front of her…
“It doesn’t hurt, Ollie, really, ”she said. “Its like falling off a cliff in slow motion, you know?”
Jenny’s strength was about giving her loved ones strength, but with her gone, Oliver admitted “ I did what I had never done in his (father’s) presence much less in his arms. I cried.”
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Silence speaks louder than words, just as simplicity speaks clearer than elaboration. Erich Segal became the father of a legend with a Love Story which expresses a lot with a few words. The complexity of the plot is presented as though it’s the simplest thing to understand. So much so, that every person who has experienced the slightest fondness for someone else easily relates to Oliver while he struggles through the slow and excruciating experience to Jenny’s end. Segal’s precise and short sentence structure keeps the narrative tight throughout, which emphasises the depth of the plot even more. The characters are so well etched out that it doesn’t seem like reading about fiction, it’s like reading about the person living next door. Oliver and Jenny seem like people we have seen around us and known for sometime. Their issues may be heart wrenching but as individuals Oliver and Jenny almost symbolise any couple in love and willing to love till the end of time.
Love Story has been read over decades and touches the souls of many still. With the title blatantly claiming to be a “love story”, the effect of the story is increased ten-fold as the reader is intrigued to know what a title so simple could possibly offer as a story. A love story is what it is, but the intricate details that love brings along, is what the essence of the narrative really is.
Jenny Cavilleri may have died in the book, but in the mind of millions of readers over the years, and for Oliver Barrett IV, her spirit lives forever…