Conflict occurs in every aspect of life, whether it is in a short story, or reality.
Usually, conflicts are experienced at different times in life varying on what a person is
experiencing at that moment in his or her life. For Jim, the main character in T.
Coraghessan Boyle’s “Carnal Knowledge,” conflict rises within himself. Internal conflict
is the struggle within the plot between opposing forces, specifically within the mind of
the main character (Meyer 2177). Jim meets a girl, Alena, and becomes very interested in
her and her life. He is willing to overlook his own beliefs and participate in Alena’s
actions in order to be with her. Jim begins to take Alena’s beliefs as his own and attempt
to impress her through is anti-animal cruelty actions, ultimately leading to his
unhappiness with their relationship.
One of Jim’s actions to impress Alena is he partakes in protests against animal
cruelty, an action he would not have completed before meeting her. Jim calls in sick to
work in order to go with Alena to the protest. “Alena was watching me from bed as I
dialed the office and described how the flu had migrated from my head to my gut and
beyond…” (Boyle 570). Boyle shows that Jim is willing to ignore his responsibility of
his job in order to spend time with Alena, a girl he hardly knows. Not only does Jim
participate in the protests, he approaches a lady wearing a fox coat, an act he would have
thought harmless before meeting Alena, to confront her about her decision to wear animal
fur. When he attempts to speak to her, he is knocked unconscious by the chauffer, a
former kickboxing champion. Jim goes to desperate lengths, denying his own thoughts
and beliefs, in order to impress Alena.
Jim also struggles with his beliefs when he goes to assist Alena with the turkey
liberation. Boyle shows Jim’s internal conflict becoming more intense when Alena gets
out of the car and kisses her friend Rolfe, the leader of the turkey liberation. “She took
the steps in a bound and threw herself in his arms. I watched them kiss, and it wasn’t a
fatherly-daughterly sort of kiss, not at all” (Boyle 573). Jim is clearly unhappy with
Alena’s relationship with Rolfe and begins to doubt Alena’s feelings for himself. He
feels that she is more interested in being with Rolfe that spending time with him. His
thoughts are confirmed when Alena and Rolfe leave him at the turkey farm the night of
the liberation. They do not return to pick him up until the morning after, explaining that
they could not have waited on him any longer. Jim begins to see the situation for what it
truly is once Alena leaves him at the turkey farm.
Jim begins to see his own internal conflict after he has liberated the turkeys. He
imagines Alena leaving him and going back to Rolfe’s shack and he becomes upset.
Once Alena then explains to him that she is going with Rolf alone to free some grizzlies,
Jim becomes highly aggravated. He feels he has been tricked by Alena and she does not
appreciate everything he has done for her. Jim realizes that Alena’s concern is not for
him, it is only to help whatever animals she can. On his ride home Jim sees his
relationship with Alena for what it really is. He had been changing his beliefs in order to
please and impress her. “…I spoke the word aloud, talking to calm myself as if I’d
awakened from a bad dream, it’s only meat” (Boyle 579). Jim’s relationship with Alena
was not something worth changing his beliefs for, it was only a physical desire that he
possessed for her.
Throughout “Carnal Knowledge,” Boyle accurately portrays Jim as a man who is
desperate for a relationship with someone. He becomes attracted to Alena and disregards
his own beliefs in order to have a relationship with her. He progressively becomes
unhappy with the relationship the more the story goes on because he is not acting like
himself, he is acting as Alena wants him to be. He finally learns that he was not in an
actual relationship with Alena because he was not able to be himself. Jim learned that
changing his own beliefs in order to please someone else will never end in happiness.
Work Cited
Boyle, T. Coraghessan. “Carnal Knowledge”. The Bedford Introduction to Literature.
Eighth ed. Michael Meyers. Ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 565-579.
Print.