Examples of conflict in 'The Secret River'

The Secret River Examples of Conflict

What is listed below are some examples of the conflicts that occur within the novel ‘The Secret River’. These are not the only examples but they are a guide to help you as you progress through the novel. Try and find your own examples and add these to the table that we have created in class, whether they are personal conflicts, social conflicts or national conflicts all conflicts should be able to fit under one of these. Remember also that it is worth colour coding your book either with highlighters or coloured tabs so that you have one colour for personal conflict, one colour for social conflict and one colour for national conflict, so that as you go through you use a colour for each example this will mean that when revising it will be easy to locate particular examples within the novel.
Strangers

Page 5-6 William Thornhill’s first encounter with an Aboriginal. In this example we see that the conflict with the Aboriginal seems to arise out of a sense of fear. The Aboriginal carries a spear and William seems to obsess about this, even imagining what it would feel like to be speared. He also fears for the safety of his family and describes them as ‘soft parcels of flesh: his wife and children’ as if to over exaggerate their vulnerability. This conflict also arises from a lack of understanding, some underlying prejudices and a lack of communication. William tells the Aboriginal to ‘be off’ which the Aboriginal begins to mimic, not really understanding what William wants. There is also William’s underlying assumption or prejudice that the Aboriginal is violent and only wants to cause harm to him and his family. This conflict could also be part of a power struggle as William tries to assert his authority over the Aboriginals, as he feel himself superior to them.

London

On page 9 we are introduced to the life of the Thornhill’s and already see the possibility of conflict arising particularly as it is mentioned that ‘The Thornhills all stole Turnips from time to time, running the risk of dogs getting them...’ This example shows that there is a conflict between the family and society as they need to steal to survive. As the term conflict means many things the constant struggle to survive is also part of this conflict. The family have the moral issue of whether to steal, but the parents also have the added burden of helping the family to survive. William is brought up with the mentality of doing whatever it takes to survive, which does eventually lead him to further conflict.
On page 11 we also see the conflict amongst the Thornhills themselves which falls under the category of interpersonal conflict. Mary tells William ‘Your name is common as dirt, William Thornhill, she said, and the anger rose up in him’. The idea that they would also fight amongst themselves shows that they are not always unified by a common goal of survival. William goes on to say ‘William Thornhills will fill up the whole world’. I believe that this suggests that it is the type of person that William is that will fill up the whole world rather than William populating the world himself. He seems to be defiant here and saying that one day it is people like him who will run the world and take over from the people that have kept him down for so long. We see this defiant streak in William that does inevitably lead him to further clashes throughout the novel.

Also on page 11 we get to understand one of the factors that drives William, ‘He was always hungry. That was a fact of life: the gnawing feeling in his belly, the flat taste in his mouth, the rage that there was never enough.’ It is this idea that William always wants more, the fact that he has been deprived for so long means that he feels that the world owes him something and he will do whatever it takes to achieve this, whether this is through violence, criminal activity or sheer will power. When he becomes a man and father and husband he wants the best for his family and wants to provide everything that he didn’t have. There are also examples in this section of William stealing food from his brothers mouth, just in order to have a little more food. The fact that he would take something off his brother in order to survive suggests how desperate their situation was.