In presenting events, a writer heavily relies on conflict which is considered the main driving force of the fictional work. Conflict is a key element in dramatic texts and plays an important role in developing events in them. It reveals the differences arising from conflicting opinions and viewpoints among the characters regarding a particular issue or idea between the characters of the play. This research, based on a descriptive-analytical method, aims to study the conflict in Tawfiq al-Hakim’s Ya Tali’ al-Shajara. This play is one of the first plays written in an absurd style in Arabic literature, depicting events in an absurd manner. The play presented a new concept of the internal conflict and specific worldview of its characters. It appears that Al-Hakim paid great attention to the psychological dimensions of the characters in this play, a hallmark of the theater of the absurd. Al-Hakim skillfully used all kinds of conflict in the play, although the internal conflict was more evident in it. The conflict in this play is not between human desires but between abstract mental positions and ideas, represented by contrasting pairs such as dream and reality, fantasy and reality, immortality and annihilation.
