The Man Who Jump Into The Water Short Story

Unresolved Psychological Conflict

“The Man Who Jumped Into the Water” is a short story that entails utilizes unforeseen events to shock the reader. “The Man Who Jumped Into the Water” primarily takes place around the pool of Charlie Hartz’s mansion (Colwin 12-20). The narrator and her boyfriend, Jeremy, go swimming almost every day with each other at Charlie’s house until Jeremy must return back to Dartmouth for college (14-16). While Jeremy is at Dartmouth, he returns back to Charlie’s in his office and says that he wants to quit college, but Charlie has the narrator come convince Jeremy to continue through college (18). After Jeremy returned to college Charlie unexpectedly commits suicide, but leaves no explanation as to why he kills himself (19-21). The

After the narrator finds out about Charlie’s death, she is hysterically crying about his death (19-20). Her father then offers her alcohol to stop the pain, and by doing this and not talking about the conflict, Charlie committing suicide, the conflict just goes unresolved for the narrator (20). The narrator begins to build up intrapersonal conflict because she is just drinking the pain away, but in reality the internal conflict of Charlie killing himself is still there for the narrator. She does not express her feeling much except for when Charlie died. For example, when she is on the phone with Jeremy she claims that she is forced to go to the funeral, but she actually wants to go (20-21). After that, Jeremy states that Charlie’s death is corny and then the narrator turns furious with him, but she has nice and gentle in the story. This supports the thesis because it shows how the building up of internal conflict can lead to a sudden outlet of anger. The narrator has never acted like this before and it shows that unresolved conflict will produce outbursts of an