Conflict And Conflict In The Tractor, By Peter Cowan

797 Words4 Pages
In the short story, “The Tractor”, written by Peter Cowan, he develops the idea that there is an ongoing conflict between those who want to preserve the forest and those who want to cut it down for societal purposes. Seeing the different views on this topic draws the reader to see what happens in the end. Each events flows to the next so smoothly and they all connect in one-way or another to the theme, and the plot. This story takes place in beautiful, sunny Australia during the late twentieth century. The two protagonists Ann and Ken are a couple soon to be married. Their characters are completely different in the sense that Ann believes in saving the forest. Her fiancé, Ken is a businessman that helps companies cut down forests…show more content…
“She said desperately, ‘Do we have to change everything? Wipe out everything so that everlastingly we can grow things, make things, get tax deductions? You don’t even leave a few acres of timber, somewhere for animals and birds-’ ‘Animals and birds,’ he said. ‘You can’t stop progress,’ ” (pg.369). “ ‘He’s been around here something like ten years. I remember when I was at school. He’s mad.’ She said, ‘All those who oppose us are mad,’ ” (pg.367). Both these quotes state the constant conflict between both man and man, and man vs. environment. The conflict of man vs. man is between Ken and his men trying to clear-cut vs. the unknown man trying to stop them from doing so. The conflict of man vs. environment is Ann trying to convince Ken to leave some “acres of timber” for the animals, while he thinks there is no point and they should just cut it all down. These points are brought to the readers’ attention to show the importance of the environmental standpoints. It is effective in the way there is more than one type of conflict making the theme more intriguing. The most interesting part of the theme is that it refreshes our insight of the modern world

More about Conflict And Conflict In The Tractor, By Peter Cowan

Open Document