Faulkner Joyce Internal Conflict in

Faulkner Joyce Internal Conflict in "Araby" and "Barn Burning" The key theme running throughout both James Joyce's "Araby" and William Faulkner's "Barn Burning" is the conflict between the protagonists' inner conceptions of what the external world should be like, and the actual reality of their respective circumstances. For the narrator in "Araby," he is conflicted between the seemingly real and intense consequences of his daydreaming, and the drab or mundane aspects of his real, every-day life.

To him, Mangan's sister, and the bazaar both represent the romantic visions that he entertains within the context of his otherwise unromantic life. For Sarty, his conflict stems from his notions of what justice and morality are, and the way these ideals contrast with the physical events surrounding his life, such as his familial ties to his father. In both stories, the main characters progress towards manhood by coming into close contact with the very real consequences of their somewhat naive understandings of how the world operates.

In this way, both short stories follow a similar pattern, though they follow this pattern by using different characters, ideals, and settings. In "Araby," the narrator becomes increasingly consumed by idealistic and romantic thoughts of Mangan's sister as the story progresses. There is a tumultuous mingling of the realities in the narrator's life, and the imaginary and exotic dreams that come to dominate his thoughts. Of course, this dangerous combination centers upon Mangan's sister; she represents both the exciting and the mundane.

This is fundamentally because although she is a part of the ordinary atmosphere of northern Dublin, she remains something strange and somehow unattainable for the main character. He finds himself daily waiting by his window to catch a glimpse of Mangan's sister, so that his daydreaming can become more vivid and intense. However, when he actually comes into contact with Mangan's sister, and he tells her he will attend the bazaar for her, the narrator initially interprets this as the very near realization of his internal fantasies.

Joyce writes, "I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play," (Joyce 188). This is a significant passage because it represents the point in the story during which the narrator is confusing his idealistic dreams with reality most severely.

It is important that Joyce characterizes the essential daily obligations of the boy as seeming like children's games; through the narrator's obsession with the romantic life that Mangan's sister represents for him, the necessary actions of everyday life in northern Dublin seem like things of the past, and his prior concerns for school have vanished, only to be replaced by his visions of what "real" life would be like with Mangan's sister.

This vision of the future, and what the bazaar can offer for it, seem real and adult to the boy. Yet, just as fantasy seems about to win out over reality, the narrator's desires to attend the bazaar -- which he believes will somehow provide him with a gift that will express his feelings for Mangan's sister -- are gradually impinged upon by the events of his everyday life.

To begin with, his uncle is late to arrive with his train fare, which gives the narrator time to contemplate just how realistic his hopes to attend the bazaar may be. Joyce writes, "I had to endure the gossip of the teatable. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did not come... I began to walk up and down the room, clenching my fists," (Joyce 189).

At this point the narrator is being confronted with the possibility that his daydreams may be unrealistic based solely upon his environment and the surrounding circumstances of his life. Once he actually attends the bazaar, however, this feeling becomes more acute, and the narrator reaches an epiphany of realization.

When the narrator realizes that the bazaar holds nothing that remotely resembled his inner fantasies, he recognizes the foolishness of his romanticized feelings and conception of the world: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity: and my eyes burned with anguish and anger," (Joyce 191). In short, he found that his daydreams were childish, and that the humdrum monotony of life in northern Dublin was real and adult.

Sarty Snopes, on the other hand, is conflicted between what he believes to be right internally, and the pressures upon this belief from his external reality. Essentially, he steps into manhood in a similar manner as the narrator in "Araby," but instead of being consumed by romantic visions of love, Sarty is convinced in the existence of justice or right and wrong.

In many other settings, this belief would not create a conflict, however, Sarty's father is a relatively nefarious character; he resents those who possess more than him, takes affront easily, and retaliates in petty as well as in criminal ways. Yet, of course, Sarty is bound by blood to his father -- which Abner reminds him of on a number of occasions. Abner calls this "The old fierce pull of the blood," (Faulkner). This presents a conflict that Sarty is not, initially, ready to deal with.

This pull leaves Sarty conflicted through the majority of the story, and causes him to sometimes sympathize with his father and other times to act to stymie his actions. Sarty first acts on his father's behalf after the first court hearing, in which his father was accused of a barn burning and found innocent, despite his actual guilt. Sarty spills his own blood in a fight defending his father -- a highly symbolic event.

Later, after Abner is told by de Spain that he could never hope to earn the money that the rug was worth, Sarty again sympathizes with his father: "His father looked at him -- the inscrutable face, the shaggy brows beneath which the gray eyes glinted coldly. Suddenly the boy went toward him, fast, stopping also, suddenly. 'You done the best you could!' he cried," (Faulkner).

Yet, as the story progresses, his father's repeatedly demonstrated disgust for all that Sarty associates with truth and justice gradually pulls the boy away from the obligations he feels he has to his family. Ultimately, this manifests itself in Sarty's attempt to warn the de Spains that Abner would burn down their barn. Sarty's realization that his mother and.