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Literary conflict is a vital component in most fictional stories, creating a sense of immediacy and excitement. It can involve conflicts between characters, their environment, technology, and reality. Conflict reveals character motivations and can involve struggles against oneself, political systems, or nature. It defines uniqueness and reveals inner thinking, creating a deep connection and sympathy for the character.
A literary conflict is the central element around which most fictional stories revolve, be they novels, short stories, or other formats. It involves different points of view between characters in the story, or it can also involve conflicts between characters and their environment, between forms of technology, conflicting views on reality, and more. These different points of view can be violently expressed in the story, but they are equally likely to be ideological and a way of defining what the characters are experiencing. Literature uses literary conflict to give stories a sense of immediacy and excitement that they otherwise would not have.
Unlike everyday life where most people go to great lengths to avoid conflict, in the language of literature it is an essential component that makes a story worth reading. This is because the use of literary conflict has the shorthand effect of showing characters and environment more sharply than ordinary events would. As the plot of the story and the intentions of the characters are revealed, the literary conflict gives the reader an understanding of the motivations behind the narrative, dialogue and action taking place. The reader gains an idea of which side he might be playing as the conflict reveals the true nature of what is taking place.
Characters like the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, created by English novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, were defined by the conflicts they routinely faced. Not only was Holmes constantly faced with ruthless criminals, but chief among them was his intellectual equal in the criminal mind of Moriarty. Moriarty’s actions established Holmes as an archetypal hero fighting for the rule of law in civilized society. Moriarty represented, through his vast criminal enterprise and ruthless desire to quickly put Holmes to rest, the more barbarous side of human nature.
The polarization of literary conflict between the main characters of a story is an obvious example of the use of literary device. However, conflict between humans is by no means the dominant method used by the authors. The narrative history portrays a wide variety of literary conflicts, from humanity’s struggle against the gods in Greek and Roman times by characters, such as Hercules, to struggles against faceless political systems that arbitrarily define reality, as in the famous novel by George Orwell, 1984.
The range of use of literary conflict can be quite surprising. Aside from characters acting against each other, nature or vaguely defined political organizations, they can also be in direct conflict against themselves and the hidden fears in their own minds. One of the most prominent examples of this is Ebeneezer Scrooge, from the 19th-century English writer Charles Dickens’ short story, A Christmas Carol. Scrooge wrestled with ghosts who clearly depicted his greedy and self-absorbed life to him in exquisite detail. Dickens may have written the story intended to be a morality tale about living a compassionate and meaningful life instead of a portrayal of actual visitation by spirit entities. Several prominent misers from Dickens’ day appear to have been used as character outlines for the description of Scrooge.
The subject of literary conflict can involve anything from elaborate tales of reanimated corpses as in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to a great white whale in Melville’s MoDick, or the daily challenge of kicking a football for Charlie Brown in Charles Schultz’s famous cartoon Peanuts. It may involve common human traits such as age, gender or economic status, or struggles between humans and machines, aliens or magical creatures, as often occurs in science fiction and fantasy novels. Literary conflict is important because it defines the uniqueness of the characters and reveals their inner thinking. It reveals why they risk their lives for reasons that might otherwise seem silly on the surface. Gaining an intimate look inside a character’s motivations through the use of literary conflict allows for a deep connection and sympathy for the character to be established, which, ultimately, can transform a reader’s life as well.
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