Conflict in The Interior Castle by Jean Stafford Essay

Conflict in The Interior Castle by Jean Stafford The Interior Castle by Jean Stafford is a very disturbing but thought-provoking story of a woman who creates a separate world within her head after being severely injured in a car accident. The conflict of the story is Pansy’s attempted escape from pain. Throughout the story she develops an incredibly intricate world within her own mind. She attempts to run from the pain she feels by retreating into this world in which she has made for herself. After arriving at the hospital with severe facial and cranial injuries due to a car accident, Pansy Vanneman began to lock herself away within her head in silent, unspoken hopes of escaping the terrible pain that surged throughout her body. She†¦show more content†¦Oliver. Into the fall garden she strolled, wearing a very out-of-place pink hat. Her love ignored her and took another love interest right before her eyes. The color pink, although seemingly beautiful and powerful to her brain, was sometimes very hurtful to Pansy. It was times like these that her brain failed her and she could not escape from her emotional pain. During Pansy’s accident, she had sustained severe facial injuries, mainly to the structure of her nose. Once again to escape the pain, Pansy would draw back into her own perfect mind so as not to deal with the horrific pain that her body was putting her through. The only person that threatened to take this security away from her was one Doctor Nicholas. Dr. Nicholas was extremely intrigued with Pansy, not only because of her fantastic injuries to her face and skull, but also because of her reaction to it all. She showed no emotions whatsoever. No pain, happiness, sadness, nothing at all. He believed he was witnessing shock at a level he had never before seen. Pansy, however, was as fascinated by him as he was of her. She wondered to herself if he had the creativity and â€Å"imagination† it would take to reconstruct her nose. She believed that nothing he could accomplish on the surface would come close to comparing with her magnificent mind. After spending some time in the hospital, Dr. Nicholas decided to finally operate on Pansy’s nose.Show MoreRelatedHistory of the Development of the Short Story.3660 Words   |  15 Pagespractitioners, including Shirley Jackson, whose story, â€Å"The Lottery,† published in 1948, elicited the strongest response in the magazine’s history to that time. Other frequent contributors during the last 1940s included John Cheever, John Steinbeck, Jean Stafford and Eudora Welty. J. D. Salingers â€Å"Nine Stories† (1953) experimented with point of view and voice, while Flannery O’Connors â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find† (1955) reinvigorated the Southern Gothic style. When Life magazine published Ernest HemingwaysRead MoreOne Significant Change That Has Occurred in the World Between 1900 and 2005. Explain the Impact This Change Has Made on Our Lives and Why It Is an Important Change.163893 Words   |  656 PagesUrbanization: In Search of an Urban Paradigm for an Urban World †¢ Howard Spodek 53 3 Women in the Twentieth-Century World Bonnie G. Smith 83 4 The Gendering of Human Rights in the International Systems of Law in the Twentieth Century †¢ Jean H. Quataert 116 5 The Impact of the Two World Wars in a Century of Violence †¢ John H. Morrow Jr. 161 6 Locating the United States in Twentieth-Century World History †¢ Carl J. Guarneri 213 7 The Technopolitics of Cold War: Toward