“Rooftop Eddie” is the name of the story that I used each year to explain the difference between an internal conflict and an external conflict to my students at South Hadley High School where I taught for a little over a decade. This is that narrative. I offer you the same challenge I offered my sophomore English students: Identify the two conflicts, internal and external, and point out where they are resolved.
In the 1950s in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there was a group of boys who hung out on the roof of a six-story apartment building. They didn’t know why they liked it up there as much as they did, and they never thought about it or discussed it, but it’s likely that the roof afforded them a view city life from afar. From the top, buses came and went without the stink of diesel. Garbage trucks came and went without the ceaseless crash of galvanized garbage cans. Even traffic was muffled and blaring horns sounded like a distant bird calls. They could see east almost to the river. They could look into Tompkins Park where the older kids hung out or played basketball. They could watch the windows gradually steam up inside Breakfast Slava, a Ukrainian restaurant at the end of the street.
Up there, they could avoid the grinding hierarchical bullying. Nine year olds picked on seven year olds. Eleven year olds picked on nine year olds. And so it went up until adulthood, when age means less and the hierarchy born of money and power holds sway. As they were only twelve, they had a ways to go. The rooftop gave them a break.
And it lasted a couple of years—that easy escape from everything, except, of course, each other.
Rooftop Eddie was always first to be on the roof. The others acknowledged this with his nickname. Michael whose parents served tham chocolate soda was also regular on the rooftop. Eric whose mother went door to door selling encyclopedias was in the group. Johnny Keating was up there frequently. They called him by his first and last name because his parents always called for him like that, yelling from the stoop so loudly that the faint echoes of his name reached up six stories to the boys on the roof.
It was Johnny Keating’s idea that they should jump.
“Let’s do The Jump,” he said one day.
They all knew what he meant: There was an alley between 275 and 277. Eight feet separated the two brownstones but the tops of each building had an overhang and the actual span was about five feet, and both apartment buildings were six stories high. They had tried before to get to the rooftop of 277 by using the access ladder and hatch at the top of the stairwell, but it was padlocked. Their rooftop on 275 was a quick climb of about 10 rungs and then a shove against the hatch, unlocked, and a clamber into the bright light.
It would have doubled their tiny kingdom had the padlock not stopped them.
None of them said anything in response to “Let’s do The Jump.” Reluctance took various forms. Eye rolling, head shaking, and wrinkled brows were all the feedback Johnny Keating needed. He pushed himself to his feet and walked to the edge. Then he took a few steps back and made a charge to the edge.
“Johnny, no,” said Eric.
“Shit,” said Michael.
Rooftop Eddie said nothing but his mouth was open. They all stood up.
Johnny sailed over the gap with several feat to spare. Five feet is not a great span to surmount as a twelve-year old, not with a running start. But that six stories down, that emptiness, that deadly certainty if one failed? That’s the gap that had to be jumped.
He called to them, “Come on. It’s nothin’. It’s easy.”
Eric went next, and even a bit overweight as he was, he cleared it easily. Michael followed, sailing even further than Johnny Keating had.
Rooftop Eddie walked to the edge and looked down.
They called to him.
“Just run, it’s easy,” Michael said.
“Don’t be chicken,” said Johnny Keating.
“If I can do it, you can do it,” said Eric.
Eddie walked away from the edge and turned back to face them as if he were going to go for it. But he just stood. He looked as if he might be trembling.
“I can’t,” he said.
“You can’t be Rooftop if you don’t jump,” said Johnny Keating.
Eddie looked down and closed his eyes. Then he opened them looked up and took a breath, and he sprinted.
There were eight crunches as his feet hit the gravel roof, then a slap as his sneaker planted on the stone edge, and Rooftop Eddie jumped.
——————-
I always stopped in the telling of this story at this point, and my students hated that. They were all about the ending, did he make it, did he die, did he, did he?
But I made them work a little for it. They always got the conflicts. They’d argue about exactly where they were resolved.
“It’s when he takes a breath,” “It’s when he looks up,” “It’s when he looks down,” “It’s when he closed his eyes,” “It’s when he opens them,” and I let them go at it.
“I don’t like Johnny,” “He’s a leader,” “He’s a ring-leader,” “He’s like a coach,” “A bad coach,” and on they’d go.
“Can he make himself make the jump, that’s the internal, but when, I can’t see in his head,” “Does he have to make it OK, or is it just that he jumps?” “I don’t get it, how can it be the same conflict even if he dies?” “Did he make it?” “I think it’s easier to see the internal conflict than the external one,” “He jumps, that’s it isn’t it?” “He’s back to being Rooftop at the end,” and so it went.
As I said, I just let them go at it. Eventually, they all make The Jump.