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Every story you'll analyze in English 9 is built on conflict. It's the engine that drives plot, reveals character, and delivers theme. When you're asked to write about a text, you're almost always being asked to identify what kind of struggle a character faces and what that struggle reveals.
Understanding conflict types isn't just about labeling. It's about recognizing how authors use tension to say something meaningful about human experience. The seven conflict types fall into categories based on whether the struggle is internal or external and whether the opposing force is human, natural, or abstract.
On essays and exams, you need to identify these conflicts, explain how they create tension, and connect them to larger themes like identity, power, and morality. Don't just memorize the labels. Know what each conflict type allows an author to explore and why a writer might choose one over another.
Internal conflict happens entirely inside a character's mind. It's the quietest form of struggle but often the most psychologically rich. Authors use internal conflict to develop complex, three-dimensional characters and explore themes of identity, guilt, and growth.
This conflict centers on a character's doubts, fears, moral dilemmas, or competing desires. Think of a character who knows the right thing to do but is terrified to do it, or a character torn between loyalty to a friend and loyalty to the truth.
Compare: Person vs. Self vs. Person vs. Fate. Both involve characters wrestling with forces beyond their control, but internal conflict puts the battleground inside the character's mind, while fate places it outside. If an essay asks about character agency, this distinction matters.
When conflict involves another person, the stakes become visible and dramatic. These struggles externalize abstract tensions like power, loyalty, and justice into concrete confrontations readers can follow.
This is the most direct form of dramatic tension: two characters pitted against each other through rivalry, betrayal, or opposing goals. In Romeo and Juliet, the feud between the Montagues and Capulets creates Person vs. Person conflict at every level, from sword fights to family loyalty.
Some conflicts pit individuals against forces much bigger than themselves. These struggles often carry symbolic weight, representing humanity's relationship to the world beyond individual control.
Characters confront the natural world: storms, wilderness, animals, or survival situations that test human limits. In Jack London's "To Build a Fire," a man struggles against extreme cold in the Yukon, and nature doesn't care whether he lives or dies.
This conflict creates tension between an individual and the collective. Characters challenge laws, norms, traditions, or institutions that constrain them. In The Outsiders, Ponyboy's struggles reflect class divisions and social expectations that shape his entire world.
Compare: Person vs. Nature vs. Person vs. Society. Both involve forces larger than the individual, but nature is indifferent while society is constructed by people. This distinction matters when analyzing author's purpose: natural conflicts often explore survival, while societal conflicts critique human systems.
Characters face destiny or divine will, forces that seem predetermined and inescapable regardless of human effort. Greek tragedies are full of this: Oedipus tries everything to escape his prophecy, and his very attempts to avoid it bring it about.
These conflicts involve forces that exist outside normal human experience, whether technological or supernatural. Authors use these struggles to explore fear, ethics, and humanity's relationship to what it cannot fully understand or control.
Characters face tension with machines, artificial intelligence, surveillance, or technological systems that threaten their autonomy. In stories like The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, technology that was meant to serve a family ends up controlling it.
Characters confront forces beyond natural explanation: ghosts, curses, mythical beings, or unexplainable phenomena. In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge's encounters with the three spirits force him to reckon with his past, present, and future.
Compare: Person vs. Technology vs. Person vs. Supernatural. Both involve forces beyond full human understanding, but technology is human-created while supernatural forces are not. This distinction helps you analyze whether an author is critiquing human innovation or exploring cosmic and spiritual themes.
| Concept | Best Examples of Conflict Type |
|---|---|
| Internal struggle | Person vs. Self |
| Direct confrontation | Person vs. Person |
| Survival and environment | Person vs. Nature |
| Social critique and rebellion | Person vs. Society |
| Questions of free will | Person vs. Fate/God |
| Ethics of innovation | Person vs. Technology |
| Fear and the unknown | Person vs. Supernatural |
| Character development focus | Person vs. Self, Person vs. Person |
Which two conflict types both involve forces larger than the individual but differ in whether that force is natural or human-constructed?
If a character struggles with guilt over a past decision throughout a novel, which conflict type is primary, and what theme might the author be exploring?
Compare Person vs. Fate and Person vs. Self. How do both involve questions of control, and what distinguishes where the "battle" takes place?
A dystopian novel features a protagonist fighting against a totalitarian government. Identify the primary conflict type and explain what this choice allows the author to critique.
You're asked to analyze how conflict reveals character. Which conflict type would best showcase internal character development, and which would best showcase a character's values through external action?