Narrator from the one act play Conflict
CONTEXT: In this comical look at how audiences crave hardship for the main characters in plays and stories, the narrator provides an example of a “boring” story without conflict.
Narrator:
A story begins. A child is born. He grows into a man. He experiences happiness. He meets a girl. They fall in love. They get married. They have children. The children grow up and move away. There’s a fifty percent chance that he and his wife will stay together. (Flips a coin.) Hmm. by himself now, the man grows old. Older. Older. And dies. The end. Not very satisfying is it? And why? The story had no conflict. Conflict is struggle, a quest, a battle, a challenge, a longing, an agony, a goal that seems forever out of our grasp. We, as an audience, desire, nay we demand that our characters experience conflict. And why must our main character be tortured emotionally and sometimes physically? Because it is fun to watch.
