Abstract
This article examines inner conflict as a central psychological and narrative mechanism in detective literature. While early detective fiction often presents the investigator as a figure of rational mastery, later crime narratives increasingly expose protagonists to guilt, trauma, divided loyalties, unstable identity, and moral uncertainty. Using qualitative comparative textual analysis, the study considers representative works by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and Gillian Flynn. The analysis focuses on four variables: the source of conflict, its mode of representation, its effect on investigation, and its ethical outcome. The findings show a historical shift from contained conflict, subordinated to the restoration of order, toward constitutive conflict that shapes both the protagonist and the truth-producing process.References
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