A Bend In The Road

A Bend in the Road

In Nicholas Sparks's novel A Bend in the Road, the main character, Miles Ryan, allows himself to be tormented by the killing of his wife, Missy. By assuming that it was cold blooded murder, Miles spent two years on the case, trying to find the possible "killer" of the hit and run, only to find that it was indeed an accident and nobody was at fault. After finding that the death of his wife was indeed an accident, Miles realized that by living in the past for the last two years of his life he was not able to be the person that he really was.

At the beginning of the novel, the author states, 'He (Miles) was tired of being alone, of waking up in an empty bed, though the feeling surprised him. He hadn't felt that way until recently. In the first year after Missy's death, He couldn't even begin to imagine loving another woman... Even after he weathered shock and grief strong enough to make him cry every night, his life felt wrong somehow.' The first impression that I got after reading this quote was that he was beginning to feel the need to move on. But as I read on I realized that he is so worked up about the case even two years later that he was not able to move on. As if there was something inside stopping himself. I can feel the great amount of hurt and sorrow that he is producing, a couple of weeks after her death Miles took up smoking, though he denies it. He says he is ready to move on, but his heart is not.

At one point in the story, Miles was at a bar and overheard a drunk talking about a guy named Otis and how he ran over Miles wife, and because Miles and Otis are not on each others good side, Miles rushes in and arrests Otis on the spot, pointing his gun at his head, ready to shoot when Otis gave any sign of struggle. Taking Otis in, Miles thought, 'I don't care. Otis is going to jail, no matter what happens to me. Otis will rot away in prison like he made me rot for two years.' Miles has so much anger and depression