The conflict is real and it is too big for him to tackle on his own, so he shuts down and checks out emotionally.

Another story that deals with inner conflict is "Now I Lay Me." This story is completely internal and it becomes the narrator's way to keep from losing his mind as he fights insomnia. He is suffering from shell shock. The conflict is the narrator's inability to sleep as well as his fear that if he does sleep, his soul will leave him. He admits to having "different ways of occupying" (Hemingway 276) himself while he lies awake with the most amusing thing is remembering a trout stream he fished when he was a boy. On some nights, he makes up streams, some of which were "very exciting, and it was like being awake and dreaming" (277). His imagination is so vivid, he forgets which streams are...
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