The Internal Conflicts of Decision Making

The Internal Conflict of Decision Making
There are many unwanted but necessary choices that have to be made in life, some just turns into great tragedies. William Arthur Ward once mentions, “Before you react, think.” The short story “Choices” written by Susan Kerslake reveals the risks of making choices by letting the protagonist Peggy into making a very critical life decision. Later on, the poor decision made by her leads Peggy and her boyfriend Ken into a terrible car accident resulting in a very tragic ending. In addition, Peggy learns many lessons throughout the story. Unfortunately, many important factors are lost at the resolution. The story “Choices” portrays the conflict of person vs self by presenting a setting that seamlessly controls the mood. While doing so, the theme and usage of foreshadowing also contribute to the conflict.
To start off, the story “Choices” seamlessly integrates the mood of the story in order to display conflict. The story starts off with having a very relaxed setting. The author demonstrates this when Peggy explains:   “I would mean a different type of weekend: cozy fires, snacks…” This persuades the readers into feeling the sense of home and comfort as they visualizes her mood before the conflict. As the plot gets nearer to the accident, the mood makes the setting become more tense and suspenseful. As a result, when the accident happens, the repeating usage of the phrase “It was hot” by Peggy even more contributes to the story from being very joyful to very tense which relates to the conflict of person vs self. As the accident progresses, the setting changes: “A smell of scorched hair. And metal, oil, rubber. She was too close to some machine” (120). this turns the story’s setting into a very confined space which allows the readers to have the feeling of cluster phobic   and possibly dangerous which causes conflict. Eventually, the author starts to fad the action off by mentioning, “Between the grey there was light... Everything...