In "By the Waters of Babylon," what kind of conflict is described in the last full paragraph on page 45?

You would benefit from specifying which specific paragraph
you are referring to, as everyone will have different editions of this short story or it
will be in a different collection. However, I will refer to conflict in general in this
excellent short story. Of course, when we think of conflict, we recognise there are two
types: internal conflict, which is inside someone's mind, and external, which is in the
outside world. Conflict of course is the greatest when it is both internal and external,
and this is the main conflict we see in this short story. Consider the scenario - no one
has ever gone to the Place of the Gods before, and so the narrator, John, is breaking so
many taboos of his culture. At the same time he is facing internal conflict as he seeks
to become a Priest and go through his initiation and external conflict as he faces so
many challenges to actually get there. This passage contains examples of
both:

It felt
like ground underfoot; it did not burn me. It is not true what some of the tales say,
that the ground there burns forever, for I have been there. Here and there were the
marks and stains of the Great Burning, on the ruins, that is true. But they were old
marks and old stains. It is not true either, what some of our priests say, that it is an
island covered with fogs and enchantments. It is not. It is a great Dead Place - greater
than any Dead Place we
know.

Here we see John's
internal conflict as he seeks to balance what he sees with what has been passed on to
him but also his external conflict as he presses on to his goal, in spite of his fear
and trepidation concerning all that he has heard from the
story.

Hope this helps - this really is a very powerful
story with so much conflict in it, so use this example to go and analyse other
extracts.