CONFLICT: EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL

 

1. Conflict:

   a. Protagonist v. Antagonist

   b. The problem caused for the protagonist by the antagonist

   c. struggle produced when protagonist's desire is blocked

 

2. There is no story withou conflict

   Conflict is central to every story.  It, more than anything, is the    engine of the story

 

3. Types of conflict

   a. external conflicts (5 basic types ???):

      NOTE: The book uses the term "person" rather than "character"

              1. character vs. character         

             2. character vs. nature     

             3. character vs. machine ???

              4. character vs. society                         

             5. character vs. supernatural being ???

    b. internal conflict (psychological turmoil): character vs. self  (usually coupled

      w/external conflict)

 

READING / LITERATURE

 

INDEX

ASSIGNED READINGS

QUOTES

POETRY

DEEP THOUGHT

LITERATURE ON LINE

 

 

HOME     E-MAIL

 

GORDON     CALENDAR

 

      IDENTIFY THE TYPES OF CONFLICT IN EACH OF THE FOLLOWING SITUATIONS:

 

1. A girl is told by her friends that she is "chicken" if she doesn't steal album from the record store.  After all, they tell her, it is a big store and can easily afford to "give away" one album.

 

2. A little girl goes riding her bicycle in the countryside where there are no houses.  She falls and breaks her leg and must make it back soon since the sun is setting.

 

3. A man is accused of a murder that he claims he did not commit.  In court during the trial, he screams very passionately that he did not do the deed, but the jury concludes he must have done it since he is acting like such a madman.

 

4. A man is having a terrible argument with his brother over how the family business, whichn has been losing money, should be run.  Although he knows that his own way to run the business is right, this man also knows that he stands to lose his brother, who has threatened never to speak with him again, if he doesn't go along with him.

 

5. A company president tries to decide whether or not to put a nuclear waste dump near a small town that wants no part of it.

 

6. A man is stranded on an island alone, and he has tried many times to get off the island.  He now wonders if he can live out the rest of his life alone without going totally insane, and he begins wondering if he might be better off if he threw himself from a nearby cliff.

 

7. A man who has been drinking runs over a small child.  Although he is not caught, this man wonders if he can live in peace with himself as long as  he doesn't admit what he has done, but he knows that doing so could mean    a long prison term.

 

8. Several men are playing poker.  Edward McGillicutty has a full house and thinks it is the best hand of all the players.  He bets everything he has and loses.  When he returns home, his wife discovers how much he has lost when admits to her that he doesn't have enough for rent for the month.  She threatens to take the kids and leave him.

 

9. A white family adopts a black child and they are ridiculed by both whites and blacks in their town.

 

10. Five people crash their plane in the middle of a very harsh desert where there is almost no food -- not enough to keep five people alive.  One afternoon, two of the men go in search of food.  Later only one returns. The others claim that the man who returned killed his partner so that the rest of them would have enough to ea