Student Question
What is an internal conflict a character experiences in Dry?
Quick answer:
In Dry, Alyssa experiences internal conflicts about her leadership abilities, fears for her parents' fate, and her feelings for Kelton. Kelton struggles with balancing his family's needs with his altruistic tendencies. Jacqui deals with personal turmoil due to her homelessness, and Henry is conflicted about revealing the truth about himself to the group.
Dry, like many other Neal Shusterman books, is told from multiple perspectives. This allows the narrative to dive deeper into the internal conflicts of many different characters. Alyssa has many different internal conflicts. She is a natural leader; however, she is frequently filled with doubt about whether or not she is capable of seeing herself and her brother through their dire situation. She also struggles with allowing fear to overcome her regarding the final fate of her parents. Alyssa also internally struggles with what her feelings for Kelton actually are. While there might be a small bit of romantic interest, the water situation always takes priority, and Alyssa definitely struggles with how to treat Kelton after finding out about his spying on her.
A big internal conflict for Kelton centers on helping other people. He knows that he has to be mindful of his family's supplies because protecting his family should be number one, but he also has some of his mother's altruistic tendencies. He knows that his family has supplies available to help people in the neighborhood like Alyssa, but he knows that his dad will be very angry if Kelton helps out.
Jacqui struggles with a lot due to her homelessness. She isn't a person that shares easily or quickly; therefore, she hangs on to a lot of internal, personal turmoil. Henry is similar in this way in that he struggles with whether or not he should tell the group the truth about himself and the "water" that he has with him.
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