Analysis Of Nights In Rodanthe

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Nicholas Sparks’ novel, Nights in Rodanthe, is a love story between two people who find themselves in the isolated Outer Banks town of Rodanthe, North Carolina in the year 1988. Adrienne Willis, a single middle-aged mother of three and part-time librarian, tends to her friend Jean’s inn in Rodanthe for a long weekend after Jean has to leave and attend a wedding. Leaving from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, this jaunt serves as a way for Adrienne to escape her rather stressful life. Over this long winter weekend, the inn only has one guest, Paul Flanner. Similar to Adrienne, Paul is a recent divorcee, who is trying to piece back together his life after retirement. Paul was a former facial reconstruction surgeon who sold his practice in Raleigh, …show more content…

As noted in the book, the Outer Banks was “both a strange and mystical” place, “with sawgrass speckling rolling dunes and maritime oaks bent sideways with the never-ending sea breeze.” It can be described as “a place like no other.” Many North Carolinians and others throughout the country travel to the Outer Banks to witness the serenity and beauty found amongst the sand here. Being isolated from the mainland of North Carolina, people often take a ferry to reach the islands of the Outer Banks. This can be demonstrated at the beginning of the novel when Paul takes a ferry leaving for Ocracoke, “a small village at the southern end of the Outer Banks.” The ferry, having carried both Paul and his car, drops him off. From there, Paul was able to drive northward to reach the tiny town of Rodanthe. To further illustrate how the Outer Banks was separated from the mainland, Sparks’ notes in his novel that after “the last ice age, the sea had flooded the area to the immediate west, forming the Pamlico Sound.” The Pamlico sound is the large mass of water between the Outer Banks and the mainland of North Carolina. With advances in transportation and infrastructure, Paul was able to drive to Rodanthe from Ocracoke thanks to a “highway on this series of islands” that was built after the 1950s. For those even more isolated homes that were located beyond the dunes, people had to “drive …show more content…

Hurricanes and strong storms are noted for hitting this region of North Carolina. As mentioned in geography class, North Carolina is one of the most commonly hit regions on the Atlantic coast by hurricanes. While noted earlier, Paul and Adrienne experienced a storm during their time at the inn. Occurring in the winter, this storm was a result of a nor’easter weather system. The town of Rodanthe collectively prepared for the storm as Paul noticed during one of his morning runs that the “sound of hammering began to fill the air.” To prepare the inn for the storm, Paul and Adrienne had to perform various tasks such as removing the furniture from the porches, properly closing and latching the shutters, and putting up hurricane guards around the windows. After locking the hurricane guards in place, they even “braced them with two-by-fours” for extra stability. With a day’s worth of work, these measures taken prove how strong the storms that hit the coast of North Carolina truly are; strong even in the offseason. Exemplifying the wrath of the storm, the novel states: “the storm unleashed its full fury.” A “long streaking lightning bolt connected sea to sky, and thunder echoed as if two cars had collided on the highway. The wind gusted, bending the limbs of trees in a single direction. Rain blew sideways, as if trying to defy gravity.” The sky could be described as being an “angry black” as sand and rain

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