We have all sorts of conflicting feelings, desires, and beliefs.
What contrasting thoughts and feelings is Aunt Polly having about Tom in this snippet?
"He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know."
It's a bit hard to pin down in the highlighting but:
Here are a couple of worked examples that show characters having mixed feelings:
"I’ve invested too much in that boy. Small boat like this, you can’t swap people rubber bands. You have to teach them. Spend your time. But sometimes I wonder if I’ve put my last two years into raising a snake. Instead of raising an heir, I’ve raised my doom. And then I think about starting over with someone new, and I think, O Lord."
"I don’t know if I love him or hate him. Is he confident or is he arrogant? I can’t tell! I want his attention but then I get angry at myself for wanting it, especially when he doesn’t give it to me. And then I get withdrawn, and the fact that he doesn’t seem to mind or that actually kind of works for him, that makes me even angrier, and then I go back to like poke him, to say hey didn’t you notice I was like, walking away from you?"
There's a riddle in The Hobbit:
This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
What is it?
The answer to the riddle is the focus of our next source of contrast: time.
