The kids had been out on the pond all morning. There were not enough hockey sticks to go around, so a game of broom hockey had evolved. Discarded ski caps served as goal markers, and the kids skated back and forth on the backyard “rink.” The impromptu game stretched to fill the entire morning of the canceled school day. Marco was the last to leave the ice, gathering neglected gear and a forgotten puck. As he glided toward the bank, he heard a creak and a pop. A crack began to snake its way across the surface, and when Marco was inches from the edge, one skate went through the ice. Luckily, the other skate glided to a stop in the bank’s frozen mud, giving Marco just enough leverage to pull his frosty skate out of the melting mess.

The conflict in the paragraph is character versus ...

The correct answer is D. Nature

Explanation:

A conflict is a struggle between opposing forces, in the case of narratives literature a conflict is an opposing force that stops the character from doing something or creates a negative situation for the character that needs to be solved. This opposing negative force can be expressed in another character (character vs. character conflict),  by the society or a group of people (character vs. society), by the character itself (character vs. self) or by nature or some element of it (character vs. nature).

In the excerpt presented in the question, after a group of kids plays over a frozen pond due to the cancellation of a school day a boy called Marco tries to go out of the pond but suddenly the ice breaks and one of his skates go through the ice creating a conflict as Marco find himself in a difficult situation; however the other foot of Marco reaches the Mud and he can take out the foot that was trapped in the ice. Considering the opposing force which stops Marco from continue his way and creates a negative situation is a layer of ice in the frozen pond which is part of weather and nature, the conflict is shown in this paragraph is character versus nature as the character (Marcos) struggles against an element of nature which is ice.

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