What Is The Main Conflict In 'When The Clock Broke'?

The central conflict in 'When the Clock Broke' revolves around a fractured society teetering on the brink of collapse. The story follows multiple characters dealing with the aftermath of a mysterious event where time itself seems broken. Clocks stop working, people experience time differently, and the world descends into chaos. Some believe it's a divine punishment, others think it's a scientific anomaly, and factions form around these beliefs. The protagonist, a former clockmaker, tries to fix the broken timepieces, symbolizing his attempt to restore order. Meanwhile, a ruthless warlord exploits the confusion to seize power, creating a brutal regime. The conflict escalates as rebels fight against this tyranny while struggling with their own fragmented perceptions of reality. The novel masterfully blends personal struggles with large-scale societal breakdown, making the conflict deeply personal yet universally terrifying.

In 'When the Clock Broke', the main conflict operates on two levels—external societal collapse and internal existential dread. The external conflict stems from the sudden breakdown of timekeeping devices worldwide, leading to economic paralysis, transportation disasters, and the disintegration of social order. Governments collapse as schedules become meaningless, and riots erupt over food shortages caused by disrupted supply chains.

The internal conflict is even more compelling. Characters experience time differently—some live moments in slow motion while others skip through days like flipping pages. A mother watches her child age years overnight, while a soldier relives the same horrific battle endlessly. This psychological torment forces characters to question their sanity and the nature of reality itself.

What makes this conflict unique is how it evolves. Early chapters focus on survival, but later shifts to philosophical warfare between groups advocating different responses. The Order of the Fixed Hour believes time can be reset through ritual sacrifice, while the Clockbreakers embrace chaos as liberation. The protagonist's journey from trying to repair clocks to understanding they must build a new temporal framework provides the narrative backbone. The resolution isn't about restoring the old world, but deciding what kind of time—and society—should replace it.

'When the Clock Broke' presents its conflict through a fascinating lens—what happens when humanity's most fundamental organizational system fails? The breakdown isn't just mechanical; it's the shattering of collective trust in time's consistency. Office workers arrive 'on time' to find buildings abandoned, farmers harvest crops too early or too late, and entire legal systems crumble when contracts' time clauses become unenforceable.

This creates three overlapping conflicts. The practical struggle sees engineers battling impossible physics as their repairs fail spectacularly—one chilling scene shows a fixed clock running backward. The emotional conflict hits hardest with relationships; a couple's marriage dissolves when they literally experience time at different rates, unable to sync their lives.

The most innovative conflict involves memory distortion. As temporal fractures worsen, people remember conflicting versions of events. Two childhood friends violently argue whether their shared past lasted months or years. The novel suggests time wasn't objective to begin with—the breakdown just exposed how fragile our shared illusions really are. Unlike typical dystopias focusing on survival, this story forces characters to redefine existence itself.