What are two quotes from Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick that reveal conflict?

1. "Like, hey, who's the midget? And, there goes Mad Max; and, excuse me while I barf; and, look what escaped from the freak show; and, oh my gawd that's disgusting."

This is what runs through Max's mind on the first day of school, in Chapter 12, when he and his new best friend Kevin ("Freak") are roaming the halls together, Freak riding on Max's shoulders. He's recounting all the nasty things that the other kids are saying (or perhaps only thinking) when they see the oversized Max and the shockingly small Kevin walking together in that way. The conflict is on display in the quote above, revealing how other people keep on judging both friends based on their appearance: Max, based on his hulking size and his resemblance to his father the felon, and Kevin, based on his small size and his leg brace. Their peers reject Max and Kevin as "disgusting" and a "freak show," worthy of "barf" rather than acceptance. This is a key conflict that both Max and Freak will have to deal with throughout the story.

If you needed to label it as a certain category, you could call this conflict between the friends and their peer group as "Man vs. Man."

2. "I do worry about it, though, because if she's crying, I must have hit her and I don't remember it. Which, if you think about it, is really scary. Who knows what I might do and then not remember it?"

This is what Max is thinking in Chapter 13, when his school principal and nurse are trying to calm him down after he learns that his father might be getting out of prison and wants to get in touch with Max. The conflict is internal here: Max worries that he'll be a criminal, that he'll be violent, like his father. And Max worries that he won't have the mental capacity to prevent himself from hurting other people or even to remember having done it. Max has to come to an understanding of himself as an individual, separate from his father; he has to learn to trust himself and believe in his own intelligence.

Again, if you require a way to categorize this conflict between the strong and weak sides of Max, you can call it "Man vs. Himself" or "Man vs. Self."

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

nouns - what do you call the person who passes the trophies to the prize giver/presenter?

The person who gives out the trophies to the winners are called award presenters. So what do u call the person who passes the trophies to the presenter? Thanks!

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.

Notes

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