AP English Literature and Composition Quiz: Function Of Conflict Short Fiction

Read the excerpt from a short story:

The first snow came late, a thin layer that made the sidewalks look dusted rather than transformed. Mr. Alvarez stood at the classroom window while the students pretended to take notes. The heating pipes clicked and sighed like an old man settling into a chair.

On his desk lay a stack of essays titled "What I Want to Be." He had assigned the prompt because the curriculum demanded "future orientation," but he had read enough to know the future often arrived like an interruption.

One essay was from Darnell, who sat in the third row and never raised his hand. Darnell's handwriting leaned hard to the right, as if hurrying away. I want to be alive at twenty-five, the essay began.

Mr. Alvarez read the sentence twice. He looked up at Darnell, who kept his eyes on his notebook. The room felt suddenly too small.

After class, Mr. Alvarez asked Darnell to stay. "Are you safe?" he asked, hating how official the words sounded.

Darnell shrugged. "Safe is a big word," he said.

Mr. Alvarez thought of the mandatory reporting forms in the main office, the way paperwork could become a substitute for help.

He wanted to intervene in Darnell's life in a way that mattered, but he feared that the systems meant to protect students would reduce Darnell to a case file and make things worse.

He sat down across from Darnell anyway.

In the excerpt, what is the primary function of the bolded conflict?

Read the excerpt from a short story:

Mara kept the key to her mother's house in the coin pocket of her jeans, though she no longer wore jeans often. It was an old habit—like saying "we" when she meant "I," like turning her car toward the familiar street before she remembered she had moved across town. On the morning of the estate sale, her brother Eli texted: "Don't be late. The realtor's coming at ten."

Inside, the house smelled of lemon polish and the faint, sweet rot of flowers left too long in a vase. Eli had arranged the living room into neat zones: "keep," "sell," "trash." Mara watched him tape labels to objects as if naming them made them lighter. When she reached for the chipped teacup their mother used every evening, Eli said, "That's going. It's just a cup."

Mara set it down, then picked it up again. In her mind, the cup was not porcelain but a small, steady proof that their mother had sat, had sipped, had been. She wanted to tell Eli that the cup held the last months like water holds a reflection. Instead she heard herself say, "Fine."

At ten, the realtor arrived with bright teeth and a clipboard. She praised the "good bones" of the house, and Mara felt the phrase land like a verdict. Eli signed papers quickly. Mara's hand hovered over the pen.

She thought of the key in her pocket—how it had once meant entrance, and now meant permission. She wanted to keep the house as a way of keeping her mother, but she also knew the house was already becoming a museum she could not afford to curate. Eli cleared his throat. "Mara?"

Mara signed.

In the excerpt, what is the primary function of the bolded conflict in shaping the meaning of the story?

Read the following excerpt from a short story:

On the porch, Mr. Delaine kept the neighborhood petition flat beneath his palm so the wind wouldn't flip it like a taunt. The paper asked the city to remove the old oak whose roots had lifted the sidewalk into a crooked grin. His wife had already signed, and so had the couple next door whose stroller wheels caught on the buckled concrete.

Mr. Delaine's own name hovered at the bottom, unscripted. He could picture the tree in August, thick with shade, and he could picture the ambulance last winter, its gurney wobbling as the paramedics navigated the broken slabs.

He told himself the petition was only about safety. But every time he lifted the pen, he heard his mother's voice from years ago—Don't be the one who cuts down what kept you cool.

Which best explains how the conflict—Mr. Delaine's desire to sign for safety versus his reluctance to betray the tree's meaning—functions in the excerpt?

Read the following excerpt from a short story:

At the retirement party, the conference room smelled of sheet cake and printer toner. A banner drooped over the whiteboard: THANK YOU, DR. SINGH! Someone had drawn a cartoon stethoscope with a smiley face.

Dr. Singh stood with a paper plate in his hands, listening as coworkers recited stories about his patience, his steadiness, his "unflappable calm." He nodded at the right moments, as if agreeing with a diagnosis.

In his pocket was the letter he hadn't shown anyone: the hospital's notice that his contract would not be renewed. "Retirement" was the word they'd offered him, a softer way to vanish.

He could correct the room, tell the truth, and watch their faces rearrange themselves. Or he could accept the applause and let the lie do what lies often did—make things easier for everyone else.

Dr. Singh felt the tension between wanting dignity through honesty and wanting dignity through silence.

Which best explains the function of the conflict in the excerpt?

Read the following excerpt from a short story:

In the hospital corridor, Jun kept rehearsing the same sentence: I'm here. I'm sorry. I didn't know. Each version sounded like a lie once it left his mouth.

Through the door's narrow window he could see his sister asleep, her hair flattened against the pillow, her wrist bandaged where the IV had been. Their mother sat beside the bed with her phone in her lap, not scrolling, just holding it as if waiting for a verdict.

Jun's hand hovered over the door handle. He could go in, speak, and accept whatever his mother's face decided to become. Or he could walk down the corridor, let the nurses think he'd gotten lost.

He hated that he wanted to be seen as a good son—and hated, too, that he wasn't sure he deserved to be seen at all.

Which best describes how the conflict functions in the excerpt?

Read the excerpt from a short story:

At the community pool, the lifeguard chair stood empty, its white ladder glinting. Nora arrived early for the swim clinic she had signed up for after her doctor said the word "arthritis" too gently. The water was smooth as a sheet of blue glass, and she could see the tiled depth markers like numbers on a calendar.

A teenager in a red cap approached with a clipboard. "You're in the beginner lane," he said, not unkindly. Nora wanted to tell him she had once crossed a lake at dawn, that she had been strong enough to pull her own body through cold water for miles. Instead she nodded and stepped into the shallow end.

The instructor demonstrated breathing: turn, inhale, turn, exhale. Nora tried to imitate the movement, but her shoulder snagged, a sharp protest. She swallowed a mouthful of chlorinated water and coughed until her eyes watered.

From the bleachers, a woman about Nora's age laughed with her friends, the sound bright and effortless. Nora watched the woman's sleek strokes in the fast lane and felt something old and sour rise in her throat.

When the instructor said, "Don't worry, you'll get it," Nora heard pity in the word "don't." She wanted to prove she was still the person she remembered, but her body kept insisting on a different story.

She gripped the pool edge, knuckles whitening, and pushed off again.

In the excerpt, what is the primary function of the bolded conflict in developing the story's meaning?

Read the excerpt from a short story:

Jin's father had pinned the acceptance letter to the refrigerator with a magnet shaped like a red apple. The paper curled at the corners from the kitchen's damp heat. "You'll call your grandmother tonight," his father said, already tasting the pride he planned to serve.

Jin stared at the letter until the words blurred into a single bright block: scholarship, tuition, congratulations. He should have felt rescued. Instead, his stomach tightened the way it did before a recital.

On his desk sat another envelope—thin, unremarkable, addressed in his own careful handwriting. Inside was the form he had requested from the registrar: a withdrawal packet. He had printed it at the library, paid for it with coins, and folded it into his backpack like contraband.

At dinner his father spoke of majors as if they were occupations already secured. "Engineering," he said, "or maybe medicine. Something solid." Jin nodded, chewing slowly, letting each bite become a delay.

Later, in his room, Jin opened the window to let in winter air. The streetlight made the withdrawal form look pale and sickly. He wanted to tell his father he was leaving school to apprentice at a tattoo studio, but he feared that honesty would sound like betrayal in the language his family spoke.

He slid the form back into the envelope and hid it under a stack of textbooks he no longer planned to read.

In the excerpt, what is the primary function of the bolded conflict?

Read the excerpt from a short story:

In the rehearsal room, the stage manager taped glow-in-the-dark marks onto the scuffed floor. "Stand here for the confession," she told Priya, pressing a strip of tape down with her thumb. Priya nodded, though she had memorized the scene long ago.

The play was set in a village that looked nothing like Priya's childhood neighborhood, but the director had insisted on "authenticity." He had asked Priya to teach the cast how to pronounce the few words of Hindi sprinkled through the script. "You'll be our cultural anchor," he said, smiling as if offering a compliment.

During a break, a castmate approached Priya holding a prop scarf. "Is this how you wear it?" she asked, wrapping it around her head with exaggerated care. Priya adjusted the fabric, gently, and heard herself say, "Yes, that's fine," even as something in her chest tightened.

When rehearsal resumed, the director stopped the scene. "More emotion," he urged Priya. "Make it raw. Think of your people."

Priya opened her mouth to respond and tasted metal, like she had bitten her tongue.

She wanted to correct the director's assumptions and protect herself from being reduced to a symbol, but she also feared that speaking up would brand her as difficult and cost her the role.

She hit her mark and delivered the line as written, each word precise as a bruise.

In the excerpt, what is the primary function of the bolded conflict?

In the following excerpt, a graduate student in a literature seminar argues with her advisor about her dissertation topic: She has prepared a neat proposal—margins aligned, citations impeccable—on a subject her advisor suggested, a safe subject that will "place well" on the market. But the pages she keeps hidden in her bag are messier: notes on her mother's immigrant diaries, on the way a single mistranslated word can change a family story. When she mentions wanting to write about those diaries, the advisor smiles thinly and says, "That's personal, not scholarly." The student hears the room's radiator click and thinks of her mother's hands, ink-stained from factory labels, carefully copying English phrases to practice. She nods, says she understands, and yet feels something in her chest refuse to flatten. Walking home, she imagines finishing a dissertation that earns applause but leaves her mother's voice untranslated, still waiting in a drawer. Which choice best describes the function of the student's pull toward academic safety versus her insistence on honoring personal history?

In the following excerpt, a teenage girl describes hiding her scholarship acceptance letter from her mother: The envelope is thin, but it feels like it could cut. She keeps it under her mattress, where the springs press a faint grid into the paper, as if the bed is trying to claim it. Her mother has been working double shifts, coming home with the smell of fryer oil and winter air in her hair. At dinner, her mother talks about the cousin who got a job at the factory, says it's good to have something steady, something close. The girl nods and chews slowly, tasting salt and the lie she is not yet telling. Upstairs, she slides the letter out and reads the first line again: "We are pleased to offer you…" The words make her chest ache with a hope that feels almost rude. She imagines her mother's face when she finds out—pride, maybe, but also the quick calculation of bus fare, rent, the empty chair at the table. The girl folds the letter back into its envelope, smoothing it as if tenderness could make the decision simpler.

Which choice best explains the function of the conflict between the girl's private ambition and her fear that pursuing it will betray her mother's sacrifices?

In the following excerpt, a community organizer debates whether to publish a leaked document about a local factory's pollution: The file sits on her laptop like a dare, its numbers arranged in tidy columns that make harm look orderly. The whistleblower's message is brief: "If they know it's me, I'm done." At the town meeting last week, parents had begged for answers about their children's rashes; the factory spokesperson smiled and said, "No evidence." She can almost hear that smile now, practiced and clean. Publishing the document could force action, but she imagines the whistleblower's empty chair at work, the sudden "restructuring," the quiet punishment that never makes headlines. She drafts a post with the screenshots, then pauses, fingers hovering, and wonders if she is protecting a person or protecting a system that counts on her caution. Which choice best describes the function of the organizer's conflict between exposing wrongdoing and safeguarding the whistleblower?

Read the following excerpt from a short story:

Leena's supervisor slid the new badge across the desk as if it were a reward and a warning at once. "You'll have access to the archive now," he said, smiling too widely. The archive was the reason Leena had taken the job: boxes of letters, recordings, and files the company kept locked away from the public.

At home, her brother texted: Are you sure you want to work for them? They ruined Dad.

Leena stared at the badge until its plastic window blurred. She had promised herself she would use the access to find the missing report that might clear her father's name. But she also understood, in the quiet way one understands a bruise, that to search the archive she would have to follow the company's rules—and that those rules demanded silence, even about what she found.

Which best describes the function of the conflict in the excerpt?

Read the following excerpt from a short story:

Nina's neighbor had a habit of leaving small gifts on the shared landing: a jar of jam, a potted succulent, a book with a note tucked inside. The notes were always polite, always unsigned, as if kindness needed anonymity to stay clean.

When Nina's rent increased again, she taped a "FOR SALE" sign to her couch and began packing dishes into newspaper. On the landing, another gift appeared: an envelope with cash, folded once, and a note that read, For the month. No need to mention it.

Nina's throat tightened. She told herself she should refuse; pride, she thought, was a kind of spine. But she also knew the cash would keep her from calling her mother, who would translate help into obligation.

Nina stood over the envelope, caught between wanting to accept the neighbor's help and fearing that accepting would make her small, indebted, and seen.

Which best explains the function of the conflict in the excerpt?

Read the excerpt from a short story:

Owen's new neighbor introduced herself over the fence with a smile that seemed practiced. "I'm Celeste," she said, and held up a plate of cookies as if presenting evidence. Owen accepted them, thanked her, and watched her eyes flick to the sagging gutter on his porch.

That evening, Owen carried the cookies into his kitchen and set them beside the sink. He did not eat any. Instead he opened the mail: a notice from the city about the gutter, a flyer about "neighborhood standards," and a handwritten note from Celeste—Welcome! Let me know if you need help.

He remembered how his father had spoken of help: a word that meant debt. Owen had spent years learning to do everything alone, not from pride exactly, but from fear of what dependence could invite.

The next day, Celeste knocked again. "I have a ladder," she said brightly. "We could fix that gutter in ten minutes."

Owen looked past her at the street where other houses sat crisp and symmetrical. He imagined Celeste telling someone at the next block party that he was "nice, just struggling."

He wanted to accept her help because he was tired, but he also wanted to refuse because accepting would make him visible in a way he could not control.

He said, "I've got it," and closed the door gently, as if gentleness could soften refusal.

In the excerpt, what is the primary function of the bolded conflict in conveying the story's meaning?

Read the excerpt below, in which a man visits a river where a new dam has been built:

"The river used to argue with the stones. Now it moved like it had been scolded.

A boy stood at the railing, dropping pebbles into the slow water, waiting for the old sound. Each pebble made a soft, disappointing plop.

'It's safer this way,' the guide said, tapping the sign that listed flood levels in neat columns.

I nodded because nodding is what you do when you are told you should be grateful.

But my grandfather's house had been downriver, and in my mind it still leaned into the current, stubborn as an elbow. The dam had swallowed the bend where we used to fish, and the guide's words kept trying to replace my memory with numbers.

When the boy asked if the river ever got loud, the guide smiled and said, 'Not anymore.'

I wanted to correct him, but I couldn't decide whether I was defending the river or defending the person I had been beside it."

How does the conflict between the guide's insistence on "safety" and the narrator's attachment to the river's former wildness, along with the narrator's uncertainty about what he is defending, primarily function?

In the following excerpt, a narrator describes returning to her childhood home to help her father pack after her mother's death:

"He had lined the kitchen table with boxes the size of shoeboxes, each labeled in his careful block letters: RECIPES, UTENSILS, LETTERS. When I reached for the tin where my mother kept the index cards, he slid it toward himself as if it were a plate he hadn't offered.

'Let's not make a mess,' he said, though the table was already a map of decisions.

I told him I wanted one thing: the blue bowl with the chipped rim, the one my mother used to set between us when she thought silence might starve.

He didn't look up. 'That bowl is part of the set.'

'It was never a set,' I said. 'It was just what we had.'

He pressed the lid onto the tin until it snapped. The sound was too sharp for a kitchen. 'You always do this—turn scraps into stories.'

My throat tightened, not because he was wrong, but because I couldn't tell whether I was stealing from him or rescuing myself."

What is the primary function of the conflict between the narrator's desire to claim the blue bowl and her father's refusal to let her take it, alongside the narrator's uncertainty about whether she is "stealing" or "rescuing" herself?

In the following excerpt, a night-shift nurse sits in her car outside the hospital after a difficult case: Her hands smell like sanitizer no matter how hard she rubs them on her jeans. The radio murmurs about traffic, about a concert, about ordinary hours she no longer keeps. In the ICU, the family had asked, "Is he suffering?" and she had answered with a practiced calm that felt like borrowing someone else's voice. Now she watches the hospital windows, each one a bright square that could be any room, any patient. She thinks of calling the family back to say what she didn't say: that she'd seen the man's fingers twitch, that she'd wondered if it meant anything, that she'd wanted to promise more than she was allowed. But she also remembers the charge nurse's warning: "Don't give them false hope." She starts the engine, then turns it off, as if movement would make the night real. Which choice best explains the function of the nurse's urge to offer comfort through certainty versus her obligation to remain clinically restrained?

Read the following excerpt from a short story:

At the community center, the debate club met under buzzing lights and a banner that still misspelled "Excellence." Mateo had been elected captain because he spoke smoothly, because teachers liked his calm. He practiced his arguments the way other people practiced scales.

Tonight, the topic was the city's plan to close the public library branch on the east side. Mateo had prepared to argue in favor of the closure; the assigned position was supposed to be an exercise, not a confession. But when he entered the room, he saw Ms. Howard—the librarian who had let him sit for hours after school, who had never asked why his parents were always late.

Mateo's notes trembled in his hands. He could deliver the speech, win points, impress the judge. Or he could falter, switch sides, and risk looking unprepared.

He realized he was split between wanting to perform competence and wanting to honor the place that had sheltered him.

Which best describes the function of the conflict in the excerpt?

In the following excerpt, a woman recounts a family dinner where her brother announces he is selling their late mother's house: The roast arrives in the center of the table like a verdict. Her brother clears his throat and says, too brightly, that the realtor thinks they can list by next month. He does not say "Mother's house," only "the property," as if the word can drain the rooms of their smell—lavender and dust and the faint tang of oranges in winter. The woman sets down her fork. She pictures the wallpaper in the hallway where their heights are penciled year by year, the marks rising until they stopped. Her brother keeps talking, explaining taxes, repairs, the logic of it. She nods, because nodding is what she has learned to do when a man is building a case. But her hand, under the tablecloth, grips her napkin so hard she feels the weave bite into her skin. She wants to ask if he remembers the night they slept on the living room floor after the funeral, neither of them able to climb the stairs. Instead she says, "Of course," and hears her own voice flatten into something rentable.

Which choice best explains the function of the conflict between the narrator's outward agreement and her inward resistance to selling the house?

In the following excerpt, a woman describes a confrontation with her neighbor over a fence line after a storm: The storm knocked down the old cedar fence, leaving splintered posts like broken teeth. In the morning, the neighbor stands in his yard holding a measuring tape, his boots planted as if he is bracing against more than wind. "The line's always been here," he says, pointing to the bare strip of earth where the fence used to run. The woman looks at her garden beds—flattened marigolds, tomato cages bent sideways—and feels an unreasonable tenderness toward the ruined things she planted with her own hands. The neighbor wants to rebuild quickly, to set new posts before the ground freezes. He talks about property records, about what's fair. She hears her own voice sharpen when she says she'll check the survey, that she won't agree today. The neighbor's jaw tightens. For a moment she imagines conceding just to end the tension, letting the fence go up wherever he wants. But she also imagines, years from now, walking along that fence and feeling the quiet, daily irritation of having yielded.

Which choice best explains the function of the conflict between the woman's temptation to concede for peace and her determination to defend the boundary?