Car Crash While Hitchhiking

This is the moment that after they were taken to the hospital and (the wife was told because the narrator already knew the driver was dead. P.9) hearing that the driver is dead. The narrator noticed that his wife had not yet been told of her husband’s death. Also, the narrator felt guilty about hitchhiking the car and realized that the wife is not guilty at the same time. Because the narrator thinks that the car crash would not have happened if he did not hitchhike the car, it would make him feel guiltier if the wife finds out her husband’s death. In addition, when the car crash happened, the narrator tried to hide the feeling of responsibility by pretending not to care about the situation. He wanted to feel relieved to pass on the responsibility to the driver because he was still hooked on drugs. (he also wanted to be “clean” like the wife who has power of innocent and purity I guess!) And he also felt guilty about it. That is why her ignorance of her husband’s death takes into power over those who know it. Finally, the narrator ended up at a detox center in Seattle few years later.
This moment is the turning point of the narrator’s life. Also, the driver’s death is an important event in this story. What if one of the three people (salesman, Indian, student), who had fed the narrator amphetamines, hashish, and alcohol, died instead of the driver. Would the narrator still feel guilty about the death? I do not think so. Because the car crash happened to the innocent and guiltless family, he felt guilty and thought of changing his life. I think that he did not want the wife find out her husband’s death, but at the same time, he wanted her know about it because her ignorance gave her power and made him more nervous even though he would feel guiltier when she finds out. He kind of needed the accident for his own good. It made him look back into his life. He would still live in the cycle of drug addiction and would have never ended up at a detox center without the...