Bethany Baldwin's The Wrong Grave

Because Miles Sperry, in the narrative,”The Wrong Grave”, suffers from egocentric and superficial traits, he lacks the ability to see the reality of death, Bethany Baldwin’s actual persona, and the truth behind his own self-righteousness. Through Bethany’s imitation of herself as Gloria Planck, Miles comes to the realization that the girl he thought he loved is never coming back and that he must move on to eventually find peace. This story is about a young, struggling poet, Miles Sperry and the series of events that take place after he digs up the grave of his recently pasted girlfriend. Through these events we discover that Miles has many internal struggles. In the first few paragraphs, the narrater states,” Miles had always been impulsive.

As soon as he lifted the coffin, a girl appeared, But he did not think it was Bethany. She appeared to had many physical changes that ,of course, he would only notice. As he states that,” She was taller and had a significantly more developed rack. She even had a tattoo.” When Miles focused on her, he noticed her beauty. The narrater said, “ The dead girl was also extremely pretty, if you ignore the hair. You might think less of MIles that he thought so well of the dead girl, that this was a betrayal of Bethany. Miles felt it was a betrayal.” The boy thinking this is another example of how he only saw what he wanted to see. Miles once again lacked the ability to notice anything other than the physical features. The dead girl identified herself as Gloria Palnick. Bethany acts as Gloria to save Miles from himself. The girl follows Miles, taunting him with questions about Bethany and his poetry. After all Miles had to deal with he is then filled with

She did this by talking to him about her, telling him what he did was wrong, and allowing him to cry. Through out the story , Bethany’s hair had been referred as to having emotions and actions. As in the narrative it states, “Her hair was really coiling around, really seething now. Miles thought he could here hissing noises.” Her hair symbolized her death and once it touched Miles’s face, it made him aware that death was real. He felt it. As soon as Bethany saw this, she let him go because her objective was complete. Although, Bethany did have physical differences, she did not act any differently when portraying Gloria. She was her being her true self. Miles struggled to notice who Gloria really was, since he had always noticed her physically and not emotionally. Bethany was in front of Miles the whole time, yet he just couldn't seem to notice it. The boy never got his poems, due to the fact, that Bethany kept them in her chest and when Miles left , she placed them inside a statue the two of them use to share secrets in. Bethany then said, “ Maybe Miles would find it one day. She would like to see the look on his face.” Ms. Baldwin says this to allow the reader to know that if he ever did, he would immediately know that it was her the whole time. By the end of the story, Miles took many years off of writing poetry. He’d receive a job at the weather channel