• E.g. W. Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice, W. Golding Lord of the Flies; D. Lodge Nice Work; D. Lodge Thinks.

• From Thinks…:

• Types of Internal Conflict:

• Centuries before Sigmund Freud invited the first patient to lie on the couch, psychology was already a part of literature. Writers have always been aware of the contradictory inner emotions and impulses everyone experiences. Internal conflicts are also called Man vs. self. It's anything emotional or mental where the character is essential, both protagonist and antagonist.

• Passions/desires vs duties, awareness of class or morality, or social mores:

• E.g. Ch.Bronte Jane Eyre;

• E. Bronte Wuthering Heights;

• D.H. Lawrence Lady Chatterley’s Lover;

• In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale is in a constant internal struggle to reconcile his place as a spiritual leader in the community with the sin of his secret affair with Hester Prynne, which resulted in the birth of their daughter, Pearl.

• Two opposing feelings:

• E.g. E. Bronte Wuthering Heights; Th. Dreiser An American Tragedy; D.H. Lawrence Sons and Lovers;

• From Wuthering Heights:

• 'May she wake in torment!' he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. 'Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not THERE - not in heaven - not perished - where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer - I repeat it till my tongue stiffens - Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts HAVE wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only DO not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I CANNOT live without my life! I CANNOT live without my soul!'

• Determination and conscience:

• E.g. Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," in which the protagonist ends up struggling with his own guilt after committing a murder;

• From “The Tell-Tale Heart”:

• It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye! yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

• …

• Yet the sound increased—and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound—much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly—more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men—but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now—again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!

• “Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks! here, here!—It is the beating of his hideous heart!”

• Conflict of certainty and doubt:

• E.g. W. Shakespeare Hamlet; D.H. Lawrence J. Barnes “The Story of Mats Israelson”;

• To be, or not to be: that is the question:

• Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

• The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

• Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

• And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;

• No more; and by a sleep to say we end

• The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

• That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

• Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

• To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

• For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

• When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

• Must give us pause: there's the respect

• That makes calamity of so long life;

• For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

• The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

• The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

• The insolence of office and the spurns

• That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

• When he himself might his quietus make

• With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,

• To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

• But that the dread of something after death,

• The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

• No traveller returns, puzzles the will

• And makes us rather bear those ills we have

• Than fly to others that we know not of?

• Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

• And thus the native hue of resolution

• Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

• And enterprises of great pith and moment

• With this regard their currents turn awry,

• And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!

• The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

• Be all my sins remember'd.

• Two opposing features of character (alter ego, split identity, true self and mask):

• R.L. Stevenson Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; W.Faulkner Light in August;

• Conflict is most often expressed through action or dialog and description. The best writers can inject lots of conflict into just a few words.

• In complex works of literature, multiple conflicts may occur at once. For instance, in Shakespeare's Othello, one level of conflict is the unseen struggle between Othello and the machinations of Iago, who seeks to destroy him. Another level of conflict is Othello's struggle with his own jealous insecurities and his suspicions that Desdemona is cheating on him.

1