Transcript Encountering Conflict - The Gus Wheeler Guide

A punchy preparation for pondering the potentials and
possibilities of producing and perusing
pugnaciousness in prose
Context: less about text ...
OK; so we know that the path to success in the
Context is through the core texts ...
... And in our case, that means The Crucible and The
Secret River.
But this is NOT a text study, we’re less interested in
the themes, relationships, constructions and
cultural influences than in what the writers show
us about conflict, and how they do this.
The Crucible
Arthur Miller was one of America’s biggestname playwrights from the 1940’s through
to the mid-90’s. He wrote two towering
successes, critically and artistically: Death
of a Salesman and The Crucible.
The Crucible was Miller’s response to events
that wracked America during the 1950’s,
when fear of Communism was rampant. A
Congressional Committee (into “UnAmerican Activities”), headed by Senator
McCarthy, began to investigate whatever
links people might have had to
Communism. Suddenly, anyone who had
had any connection to the evil of
Communism was not suspect, but guilty.
Miller saw the parallels in this paranoia and
that which had swept the small Puritan
community of Salem Village, nearly 300
years earlier.
Salem Village ... Is a crucible
Metaphor: The fire burns hot, scorching the base, impure
substances to nothing, leaving only the purest metal ...
Characters as embodiments of conflict:
Fear ... of evil; of the unknown; of anyone different; of one’s own
weaknesses; of consequences = Parris, Proctor, Hathorne, the girls,
Elizabeth Proctor
Greed ... for power; for land; for security = Putnam, Hathorne
Ambition ... for political office; for marriage; for sex = Hathorne,
Parris, Proctor, Abigail
Jealousy ... of others’ good fortune; of possessions; of position = Anne
Putnam, Thomas Putnam; Parris
Ignorance ... Lack of knowledge; lack of understanding = the whole
village; Hale
A play is a crucible
Recipe: Collect together a cast of characters, stir – at times forcefully;
mould and meld with each other and occasional infusions as required;
place in a large hall and add an audience. Add tension, nerves,
anticipation and suspense. Cross fingers and await outcome.
Strategies:
Dialogue
Vox vocis of scriptor : Miller’s explanations of the history
and the characters gives both direction to the way we see the
Analogy (history)
Characterisations and relationships
The Secret River
The Secret River is Kate Grenville’s sort-of-bio-might-havebeen. She began to write a family history, but the story of
Solomon Wiseman ended up being told in a ‘factional’ way,
about Will Thornhill.
Try http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A020561b.htm
Thornhill is transported to the colony of New South Wales
after his sentence of death was commuted. His wife Sal, and
their first child Willie, accompanied him. He had been a
“lighterman” in London, and pretty much made a living in
the same way in New South Wales. Thornhill grabbed some
land along the Hawkesbury River, along with others who
found Sydney’s confines too constricting. Thornhill had been
born into conflict, with England’s grinding poverty, but in a
way, this was a good apprenticeship, as one view of his
success in Australia might say that he learned well how to
become an oppressor, rather than be oppressed.
A secret conflict
Secrecy: There are many ways in which naked conflict or aggression is
merely the tip of the spear ... The rest is the society which enshrines a
philosophy of conflict; the culture that frames it; and the institutions
that carry it out.
The Secret River, in a sense, reveals how contagious and pervasive are
these things. Transportation from one social context to another simply
made the expression of the conflict more virulent, more ... violent.
 What impact does repression, or suppression have on the nature of
a conflict?
 What do the person-to-person conflicts show, in relation to the
greater social clashes? Thornhill/Sal; Blackwood/Smasher;
Thornhll/Whisker Harry; Thornhill/Dick;
The Secret River
and the “isms” of conflict
 Racism
 Ways of seeing: black is somehow ‘wrong’,
 Imperialism (esp. cultural imperialism)
 Colonialism
 Paternalism (or patriarchy)
 Capitalism (loosely! Dog-eat-dogism, really)
 Grab-ism (obsession with ownership as power)
 Communication
 (The Lieutenant – Kate Grenville)
Concepts and conflict
You need to have devoted enough time exploring what the core
texts have to say about conflict that you have your own ideas.
You might agree; you might see elements of the way the text
you’re using deals with conflict in your own life and
experiences; you might challenge the perspectives – or
outcomes – offered in the core text.
In total, you have to produce three writing ‘projects’ (one in
Unit 3; one in Unit 4; one in the exam) that express (or
‘show’) a view (or some views) about the nature of
‘encountering conflict’.
Developing an opinion is a pretty good starting point:
knowing what you want to say to people is half the battle!
“Won’t you stand by me ...?”
Try to work out a “stance”. Means point of view. Opinion.
A useful process is to ask yourself questions about encountering
conflict. One often leads to other questions, the answers to
which can “lead” you to a better understanding, or a more
coherent or complex view.
 For example, how often are we presented with conflict as a battle
between “good” and “evil”? (Think “Star Wars” or the Harry Potter series
of films and books) Is this distinction helpful? Can we say that – most
often – where conflict arises, one side is “good” the other “bad”? Is this
duality all that common? What happens where there are not just two
sides, but several?
Answering these will give you a few ideas about how you see
conflict through some of the ways it’s presented to you.
Writing
 What sort of writing?
 What sort/s of
writing do you find
best or easiest?
 What formats,
focuses, styles or
parallels can you
‘extract’ from the
core texts?
 What processes to
generate the pieces?
To write,
you have to be a writer ...
There’s a theory going around that says
before you can write, you have to be able to
go into this fully mystic wicked trance and
some sick little dude with wings wearing a
sheet kind of floats into the scene and,
like, tells you what to write ...
Rubbish. You have to write. That’s it.
Pen. Paper. Word processor.
Typewriter, Thumbnail dipped in
tar ...
G.O. Stop when finished.
But
what
comes
after
“The”, o
Muse?
Man, like
some
days, this
job fully
sucks
(Con)Text extenders
 Sub-cores: Omagh, and The Line – Martin & Arch
Flanagan
 Films:
 Mississippi Burning; All Quiet on the Western
Front (book & film); Oh what a lovely war; The
Odd Angry Shot; Guilty by Suspicion; Kramer v
Kramer; The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith (book &
film); Bridge over the River Kwai; Cry Freedom
 Novels:
 The Savage Crows – Robert Drewe; The Div ine
Wind – Gary Disher; Capricornia – Xavier
Herbert; The Road – Cormac McCarthy