Age Of Innocence Internal Conflict Analysis
Wharton p.131-176 Internal and external conflict
Archer Newland faces a huge internal conflict with having to marry May and being in love with Ellen at the same time. This conflict is never resolved because all around Newland his friends including Ellen, have made everything so confusing to him that he ends up feeling lonely all over again. Newland doesn’t want to be scandalous because it wouldn’t be proper to show his true feelings towards Ellen. However Newland hints them in many ways. When Medora comes up to Newland and mentions Ellen’s name, as he is meditating, he is surprised to find that his heart jumps. “So she is _but she’s got to come home first to pick up Ellen. Ah – you didn’t know Ellen had come to spend the day with me? Such fol-de-rol, her not coming for the summer; but I gave up arguing with young people about fifty …show more content…
Welland. He tells them he is going to spend his afternoon going to look for a new horse to buy “Archer said that he thought of hiring a run-about and driving up the island to a stud-farm to look at a second horse for her brougham.” (page 143) but instead he goes to the party. “He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-house” (page 144) Newland was curious of where she lived, he wanted to know what it looked like “to see the place she was living in”. Through Newlands internal conflict he feels empty. We see this when he says “He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it. The rest of the world might seem less empty.” (Page 144) He uses imagery to show how the sky and sea are trapping the world “the sky and sea enclosed
Archer Newland faces a huge internal conflict with having to marry May and being in love with Ellen at the same time. This conflict is never resolved because all around Newland his friends including Ellen, have made everything so confusing to him that he ends up feeling lonely all over again. Newland doesn’t want to be scandalous because it wouldn’t be proper to show his true feelings towards Ellen. However Newland hints them in many ways. When Medora comes up to Newland and mentions Ellen’s name, as he is meditating, he is surprised to find that his heart jumps. “So she is _but she’s got to come home first to pick up Ellen. Ah – you didn’t know Ellen had come to spend the day with me? Such fol-de-rol, her not coming for the summer; but I gave up arguing with young people about fifty …show more content…
Welland. He tells them he is going to spend his afternoon going to look for a new horse to buy “Archer said that he thought of hiring a run-about and driving up the island to a stud-farm to look at a second horse for her brougham.” (page 143) but instead he goes to the party. “He was not sure that he wanted to see the Countess Olenska again; but ever since he had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted, irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-house” (page 144) Newland was curious of where she lived, he wanted to know what it looked like “to see the place she was living in”. Through Newlands internal conflict he feels empty. We see this when he says “He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the spot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it. The rest of the world might seem less empty.” (Page 144) He uses imagery to show how the sky and sea are trapping the world “the sky and sea enclosed