Collision

Collision is a sharp clash of opposing forces, characters, circumstances, or ideas in a literary work — the concrete form in which conflict manifests itself in the course of the action. If conflict is the general, fundamental contradiction that permeates the whole work, then collision is its concrete dramatic embodiment in a particular situation, the knot of clash that demands resolution. In a complex work there may be several collisions that deepen and unfold the main conflict. The term is especially used in dramaturgy, where collisions determine the tension of the action. For example, in Ivan Karpenko-Kary's drama Martyn Borulia the collision unfolds around the peasant Borulia's vain pretensions to nobility, which bring him up against reality and generate comic-dramatic situations. Sharp moral collisions — the choice between duty and feeling, dignity and conformism — mark the dramas of Lesia Ukrainka and the psychological prose of Volodymyr Vynnychenko.