Function of Conflict: Fiction/Drama - AP English Literature and Composition

It delays resolution and increases uncertainty about outcomes. Unresolved conflict keeps readers engaged through uncertainty.

It escalates complications that intensify pressure toward climax. Each obstacle builds pressure toward the story's peak moment.

It concentrates the central struggle into a decisive turning point. The climax resolves the main conflict at maximum tension.

It shows consequences and establishes a new equilibrium after struggle. Resolution shows how conflict has transformed the story world.

It escalates tension by complicating the protagonist’s progress. Serial obstacles maintain narrative momentum and reader engagement.

To test ethics and develop theme about justice versus legality. Law-breaking for justice creates ethical complexity.

It pressures the character into change or confirms stagnation. Characters grow through struggle or reveal inability to adapt.

It exposes competing desires and power dynamics in relationships. Interpersonal conflict reveals character motivations and hierarchies.

It forces change, testing beliefs and producing growth or decline. Characters evolve through confronting and overcoming obstacles.

It clarifies what can be gained or lost and why outcomes matter. Stakes create investment by showing potential consequences.

To externalize opposing desires and expose relationships and power. Character clashes reveal motivations and power dynamics.

To critique norms by pitting an individual against institutions. Individual versus collective highlights social commentary.

To test human agency against forces beyond control. Uncontrollable forces highlight human limitations and resilience.

To generate tension that propels the action and sustains interest. Conflict drives plot forward by creating challenges that demand resolution.

A struggle between opposing forces that creates obstacles to a goal. This opposition creates the core tension that drives narrative momentum.

It exposes values, priorities, and limits through pressured choices. Pressure reveals true character by forcing difficult decisions.

To sharpen contrasts, making the protagonist’s choices clearer. Foils highlight protagonist traits through opposition.

It creates gaps between intention and outcome that expose meaning. Irony emerges when conflict produces unexpected consequences.

It forces prioritization and commitment to a course of action. Conflict creates urgency that drives character action.

Internal conflict: loyalty versus self-preservation. The character faces competing moral obligations.

It generates tension that propels the plot forward. Conflict creates momentum by introducing obstacles that must be overcome.

Internal is within a character; external is against outside forces. Internal struggles occur in the mind; external involve other people/things.

It complicates the conflict by escalating obstacles and stakes. Each new challenge intensifies the central problem toward crisis.

It is the turning point where the conflict reaches peak intensity. The moment of highest tension when the conflict must be resolved.

It clarifies how the conflict ends and what changes remain. Shows the aftermath and new equilibrium after conflict resolves.

It reveals what the character wants and why it matters. Characters pursue goals when conflict blocks their desires.

It forces choices that expose priorities and moral limits. Crisis moments reveal true character through difficult decisions.

It defines what can be gained or lost by the outcome. Higher stakes create more compelling dramatic tension.

It sustains uncertainty about whether goals will be achieved. Unresolved conflict keeps readers engaged through uncertainty.