Spinster

I think this was an interesting story. There was a lot of building up to the final scene of Mr. Speed's collapse. The conflict seemed to be mostly Elizabeth and Mr. Speed's conflict. But its interesting, because it leads us to wonder if there can actually be conflict in the sense that I don't think that Mr. Speed had a real conflict with our main character. Clearly she had conflict with him, but if you really dig deeper, it is almost as if the entire conflict is Man vs Man, meaning, Elizabeth's conflict within herself. She practically demonized this man, who for whatever reason, walked around in a drunken daze. Essentially harmless was the old man, but potentially dangerous in the eyes and imagination of our main character. The idea of Mr. Speed representing a scapegoat comes to mind. The way that she projected her feelings toward her father and brother upon Mr. Speed, almost as if to cast her sin upon him, and then to fianlly see him die or nearly die in the end, it relieved an anxiety within Elizabeth. She was relieved to see that tension fall upon a sacraficial victim and all her problems be hurried away in the back of the wagon. If there was a conflict of Mr. Speed, I would say more than anything it was man vs society, he was an outcast, a social reject, a man with no one and nothing to offer society other than fear and anxiety. I liked this story, I feel most sympathetic for Mr. Speed, and I found the little girl to be most obnoxious and obsessive about insignificant things.