Secret River Conflict

Practise Sac
Conflict can reveal unexpected qualities in an individual.
Conflict is inevitable and is something everyone encounters. Individual’s responses are dependent upon their moral conscience, their ideologies or their strengths and weaknesses. An individual’s public persona may differ drastically and oppose their true qualities. In confrontation with conflict ones true identity can be revealed. Although under the pressure of conflict individuals can be provoked to act unwillingly to preserve themselves. The novel ‘The Secret River’ by Kate Grenville portrays the protagonist William Thornhill as a moral individual yet under the pressure of survival and success he weakens. The reputation of an individual can provoke unexpected sinister
In the play ‘The Crucible’ the author Arthur Miller depicts how cruel man can become when fear, suspicion and insecurity overcome reason. Danforth holds a power position within Salem. Under the pressure of the law he is tied between his moral conscience and abiding the law. ‘You must understand..that a person is either with this court or he must counted against it, there be no road between’. Danforth extreme position of power in the theocratic government of the time pressures him resolve the conflicts in an inhuman way. From the pressure of conflict he reveals qualities of immorality to protect himself and the court from ridicule. William Thornhill in the novel ‘The Secret River’ is surrounded by adversity ‘…always cold. There was a kind of desperation to it, a fury to be warm.’ From the fierce determination to strive under encountering conflict Thornhill reveals his immorality to succeed and survive. Thornhill discovers early on that life cannot seemingly be eked out on hard work alone. His integrity is continually compromised causing a ‘choking feeling’, as Thornhill was not without compassion. ‘It was, he thought, a part of the price they had to pay…for what they would get in the end’. The amalgam of his life experiences, from the struggle to survive as a boy in England to the massacre of the indigenous people, the conflicts provoked decadent qualities within
A parallel can be made between the 16th century and the 21st century, where an individual’s reputation plays such an influence in society and in maintaining ones reputation individuals can become pernicious. Various characters in ‘The Crucible’ base their actions on their desire to maintain a respectful reputation. Reverend Parris fears that Abigail will threaten and tarnish his good name. He preserves his reputation by not testifying against Abigail and her claims of ‘witch-craft’. John Proctor on the other hand protects his reputation by making a heroic choice not to make a false confession. ‘I have given you my soul, leave me my name!’. Proctor sacrifices his life for the price of a virtuous reputation.
In ‘The Secret River’, Thornhill viewed the Hawkesbury as a celebration of the emancipists. ‘There… a man did not have to drag his stinking past around behind him like a dead dog’. Thornhill’s reputation as villain and low class citizen could be forgotten. In Thornhill’s attempt to maintain his reputation as ‘landowner’ and leave his status as ‘felon’ in the past, he acts in retribution to the indigenous people who try to take his new status away from him as