The sprawling plantation home that Noah spends a year of his life renovating is a symbol of the ways in which a belief in love and destiny can guide a person’s life. Noah once showed the shabby old house to Allie during their summer of love in 1932, vowing that he’d one day fix it up and live in it. As an adult, Noah uses the first large sum of money he comes into in order to buy the house and the surrounding property. He works on the house and the land around it day in and day out, often pressing on until midnight or later. Whether or not he admits it to himself, Noah is building a house in which he hopes he can one day build a life with Allie. Allie is the “ghost” of Noah’s past, and as he completes work on the house, he turns to hard work to outrun her memory while also building a life that continues to hold space for the possibility that Allie will return to him. The house is a physical emblem of Noah’s desire to live a life in which reuniting with his true love is his fate. In building the house, Noah imagines each day he toils that he can help destiny along by creating a place suffused with the pent-up love he’s had for Allie for over 14 years. The house, constructed around a singular hope for the fulfillment of his destiny—a destiny which centers around loving and providing for Allie, and which ultimately comes true—represents how a belief in love and fate can shape and define a person’s life.
Noah’s House Quotes in The Notebook
It would work out for him, he knew; it always did. Besides, thinking about money usually bored him. Early on, he'd learned to enjoy simple things, things that couldn't be bought, and he had a hard time understanding people who felt otherwise.
"So that's the ghost you been running from." When asked what he meant, Gus said, "You know, the ghost, the memory. I been watchin' you, workin' day and night, slavin' so hard you barely have time to catch your breath. People do that for three reasons. Either they crazy, or stupid, or tryin' to forget. And with you, I knew you was tryin' to forget. I just didn't know what. […] This girl you been tellin' me about was your first love. And no matter what you do, she'll stay with you forever."
"You did a wonderful job restoring it. It looks perfect, just like I knew it would someday."
[Noah] turned his head in the same direction as hers while he wondered about the small talk and what she was holding back.
“Thanks, that's nice of you. It was quite a project, though. I don't know if I would do it again."
"Of course you would," she said. [Allie] knew exactly how he felt about this place.
"It's unbelievable, Noah. How long did the restoration take?"
He looked up from the last bag he was unpacking. "Almost a year."
"Did you do it yourself?"
[…] "I started that way. But it was just too much. It would have taken years, and so I ended up hiring some people . . . actually a lot of people. But even with them, it was still a lot of work, and most of the time I didn't stop until past midnight."
"Why'd you work so hard?"
Ghosts, he wanted to say, but didn't.
"I don't know. Just wanted to finish, I guess.”
Noah’s House Symbol Timeline in The Notebook
