1. Types of Conflict
Conflict – The resistance that the protagonist faces within the story. This can be caused by an outward force (external) or be due to the character’s own feelings (internal).
External Conflict
Person vs. Person
Person vs. Nature
Person vs. Society
Internal Conflict
Person vs. Self

2. Internal Conflict Person vs Self
NOT a visual or tangible opposition.
a character dealing with his or her own mixed feelings or emotions.
Example: A character may have to decide between right and wrong or between two solutions to a problem.

3. External Conflict
Definition: A struggle between a character and an outside force is an external conflict.
Person vs. Person/Nature/Society
Examples of External Conflict:
Characters may face several types of outside forces.
The outside force may be another character. It may be the character and the community.
The outside force may also be forces of nature. For example, a story might be the main character struggling against the arctic cold.

4. Identify the conflict

5. Identify the conflict

6. Identify The Conflict

7. Theme
In a piece of literature, the theme is the underlying central idea or the statement about life.
Themes are sentences, not words. Words that describe a story are called Topics.
Themes are usually views on life, human behavior, and/or society

8. Theme
A theme is combination of a topic and a statement about that topic.
Some ways to find theme:
What characters say (look at the dialogue)
What the character learns
Thoughts & feelings of the characters
The actions and events in the story

9. Looking at Conflict & Theme
Crossroads – Page 33
Acceptance
Modeling Tomorrow’s Assignment
Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken

10. Acceptance – Crossroad 33
Remember – Conflict describes

11. The Road Not Taken Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

12. And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

13. What are some topic words that come to mind?
The Road Not Taken

14. Focus on one word, which is the central topic?
Central Topic/ Most important word?
What can be said about that word in a sentence?