Personality Analysis of Landon Carter in the Film a Walk to Remember

Erik Erikson was an American developmental psychologist who was born in Germany and went on to organize eight stages of psychological development. He developed a model that talked about the eight stages every human passes through as he grows. These stages depict and analyze a person's life from when they are baby until they die. It mentions how in every stage a person is presented with problems and challenges. Every stage depicts a crisis, which has to be resolved or else it will create problems in the next stage. Thus, for a person to attain a positive personality, they need to attain positive goals of that stage and progress smoothly to the next one (Rosenthal, Gurney, & Moore 2).

Erickson's stage 8 theory occurs between Late Adulthood -- 65 years to death. Its quality is maturity. The conflict is Integrity vs. Despair and it represents the person contemplating his/her life and accepting its occurrences.

The most important quality of Stage 8 is the individual able to reflect back on her life, appreciate what occurred in it and gain some sort of satisfaction. She is able to accept herself and accept death with equanimity. She 'ties up' what she has to, but on the whole she has little or no regrets. The reverse of this is someone who has feelings of despair and lacks the ability to do this.

Stage 8 can be exemplified by the character of Landon Carter in a Walk to Remember.

A Walk to Remember is a popular romantic drama released in 2002. With the setting in North Carolina, the movie revolves around the life of a school heart throb Landon Carter and Jamie Sullivan, who is the complete opposite of Landon. The movie starts with a prank ending up wrong with Carter having to take part in the school play. Where Carter is not very serious about his life, Jamie is a much more focused and determined student. Preferring to stay alone and do her own thing, Jamie actually has plans for her life. Wanting to improve, Landon decides to ask Jamie for help and hopefully become a better actor. The play becomes the reason for their interactions to increase. In spending time with her, Landon changes as person and finds his own identity. Over the course of meeting Jamie and loving her, Landon evolves as a person who is better satisfied with himself.

Had it not been for Jamie, the book seems to imply that Landon would have been less satisfied with himself at the end of his life than he ultimately was. Against all odds, he loved a girl that was not only so different form himself in terms of socio-economic background but who was also ostracized in school. Jamie was a do-gooder who gave her money to the orphans and to the Church and she was also obsessively religious. She too did not dress appealingly nor did she conform to class trends. Landon, himself, is popular, wealthy, and more superficial.

A series of events causes Landon to ask Jamie to marry him which was when Jamie informed him that she had leukemia. In the meantime, Landon's love for Jamie had caused him to anonymously contribute to her philanthropic activities, to reflect on his life and become more religious as well as to make it more meaningful.

Landon married Jamie in a crowded church (the actualization of Jamie's wish), and one of London's most meaningful moments was taking this walk down the aisle despite Jamie's weakening state. This was indeed Jamie's slow, painful walk down the aisle is, indeed, "a walk to remember."