Inner Conflict And Emotions In For Good By Sarah Layden

If one fails to express their true passions for someone or something in their life the repression can lead to inner conflict and insecurity, which in turn may result in regret for not expressing their original passions and dreams. In the story “For Good” by Sarah Layden, Cece’s experiences of inner conflict and insecurity throughout the story caused by her own repression of her true passion for Juan stresses how important it is for one to express their feelings in life and not hide them, as hiding one’s true passion may lead to regret and pain later on rather than happiness. The imagery of doors and rooms at the beginning of the story represents the repressing walls Cece has created for her loving feelings towards Juan. Cece’s emotions are …show more content…
Cece has passions like anyone else, but she is unable to show them and let them free. Cece prefers to not allow others to know of her true feelings for Juan. The rooms in her mind are barriers not only one can create for themselves but barriers in life that keep you from what you are truly passionate about. In this case, the barriers Cece is facing are self-inflicted, and she wishes to hide behind them and not face the battle to overcome them. Subsequently, Cece experiences inner conflict and it is evident when she begins to make rude remarks towards Juan about his unimportance to her. It is repeated throughout the story that Cece is conflicted with her emotions for Juan. She seems to like him, but that tone begins to change when she tells Juan to “go back home then” (Layden 2) after he explains he misses his home in Mexico. Later on in the story, Cece is rude to Juan again. Juan jokingly sings to Cece that she’s breaking his heart and she responds quickly by saying “good” and a few seconds later Cece tells Juan “for his own good [that] ‘it doesn’t matter you don’t matter’” (Layden …show more content…
Because of this, she begins to try to think of how she can get away from Juan and forget about him. Regretfully, she decides to push Juan away by being rude to him and act like she doesn’t need him in front of all her friends to stop the teasing and insecurity. Inevitably, Cece regrets the remarks she made to Juan out of frustration and wants to take them back. One is convinced in the story that Cece likes Juan which made it even weirder when she burst out and told him off. This is an example of the situational irony in the story as the reader and even characters in the story did not expect Cece to be rude to Juan as she likes him. Cece wishes “she could take back what she said to Juan on last week’s sophomore field trip, or that Juan never knew what she said”. However at the same time Cece did say the rude remarks to Juan “loud enough to be heard, on purpose to be heard” (Layden 1). Cece realizes she made a mistake when she got agitated with Juan and told him he doesn’t matter. She acted out of anger and desperation to stop the pain and now regrets acting out of anger and desperation rather than out of her true emotions for