You've Reached Sam

Julie’s conversation with her mother points to the underlying theme Change as Growth: Accepting the Unplanned events that occur in her life. When her mom tells her that she shouldn’t live “always worrying about what comes next,” instead of being present, Julie grasps the real meaning (209). Her mother never thought she’d end up working at a local community college, divorced, and living in a tiny town, but she appreciates every challenge and success. Her life may not be perfect, but she finds meaning and value in it every day, lessons that Julie needed to hear and implement. By connecting this lesson to her writing, since her mom reminds her that she doesn’t write to get to the finish line but for the enjoyment of it, Julie has a clear metaphor for living in the now, instead of the past or future. Julie has either been caught up in prior memories of Sam with countless flashbacks or planning and preparing for her future after graduation. Besides most of her calls with Sam, Julie hasn’t been awake for her own life, letting it pass her by rather than enjoying her last months of senior year. Through Sam’s ongoing advice and her mother’s wisdom, Julie finally sees that her future may not be what she expected, but she will be sure to make the most of each moment.

Julie finally completes her transformation when she talks to Sam for the last time. Her anxious, frantic reaction about breaking her phone is intense as she desperately races around for others’ phones and dashes into her car, driving erratically due to her high stress. Julie can’t handle that she ruined her last call with Sam, letting him down and destroying their important goodbye, which she’s finally ready for. Julie only calms down once she gets to the barley fields, respecting the misfortune of breaking her phone and talking to Sam out loud. When she feels Sam’s presence everywhere in the field, she talks to him aloud, like Oliver does at his grave. Julie shows in this moment that she can and will talk to Sam even without her phone, going beyond the magical element to her new reality of Sam being with her in her heart forever.

Although she states her loving, longer goodbye to Sam in the fields, Julie and Sam are gifted with their final call by her using his phone. Their final call illustrates the culmination of their relationship and a meaningful completion of major themes and character transformations, including Sam’s surprise voicemail that leaves him at peace. Julie’s strategy to find Sam’s phone circles back to his statement that only their phones worked for the magical calls—a foreshadowing. By allowing them to converse one last time, Sam and Julie can fully let go of each other and their intense grief, concluding the novel’s theme of Coping With Grief. Most importantly, they can complete the promise of saying goodbye and sharing their lasting words of affection and love, an unforgettable memory they will always have. With the surprise of Sam’s voicemail admitting he never wanted to let her go and perhaps held her back with the calls, Julie also earns a lasting piece of Sam. She can hear his voice tell her raw truths about his love for her, not wanting to let go, and asking her to remember him on repeat. Julie lives out the theme of Flashbacks and Memory in the Epilogue, as her character arc is complete by living her life to the fullest while never forgetting Sam—because, just like Yuki said, letting go isn’t about forgetting but moving forward while carrying them in your heart and thinking of them fondly.