Question

Read the passage from "Two Kinds.”

In fact, in the beginning, I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so. I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images, trying each one on for size. I was a dainty ballerina girl standing by the curtains, waiting to hear the right music that would send me floating on my tiptoes. I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity. I was Cinderella stepping from her pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air.

In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk for anything.

But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. "If you don't hurry up and get me out of here, I'm disappearing for good," it warned. "And then you'll always be nothing."

What conflict is indicated by the underlined sentences?

an internal conflict within the mother, who wants her daughter to be a prodigy
an internal conflict within the narrator, who wants to be a prodigy but has not found the right activity
an external conflict between the narrator and her mother over the pace of the narrator’s learning
an external conflict between the narrator, who wants to be a prodigy, and her mother, who is less ambitiou

Answer 1

an internal conflict within the narrator, who wants to be a prodigy but has not found the right activity

Explanation: the "prodigy in me" is an inner voice pressuring the narrator — it's her own impatience and fear of never becoming anything, not a disagreement with her mother.