Jack undergoes many conflicts, both internal and external, throughout the novel. Some of the internal conflicts include Jack’s struggle against his own motivations and decisions. During different stages the exact struggles change and develop. For example at the beginning of the book he struggled with his want to write and his constant moving around with his family (Gantos 9 and 13). Another thing apparent at the beginning was that because of his unsteady life he never made any positively influential friends (Gantos 9-10). He contradicts his dream of being a writer with the choices he makes. Jack did not realize until the very end that his decisions had consequences because up until then he claimed to be doing nothing wrong. There were