Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Plot Conflict - Character vs Nature - The Lorax


Conflict

Conflict
The essence of fiction. 
It creates plot. 

The conflicts we encounter can usually be identified as one of four kinds: 
Character vs Character, Character vs Nature, Character vs Society, or Character vs Self.


Character vs Nature
In writing time today we read the story The Lorax By Dr Seuss.
It is an example of Character vs Nature conflict and is
 a metaphor for those concerned with the environment.


Here is the story as YouTube videos.

We identified the problem/conflict  
(between character and nature) in this story and identified
how we think this problem could have been resolved earlier in the story.

'The conflict in The Lorax happened because the Lorax had a nice forest filled with Truffula trees, beautiful blue water for the fish, spectacular places for the birds to sing and lots of space for the bears.  But one day the Onceler was going through the town and decided he wanted to use the Truffula trees to make Thneeds.  He made a big factory and cut down all of the Truffula trees...'  -  Hamish


'The conflict in The Lorax happened because the Onceler was cutting down trees.  The Lorax was trying to prevent that, but the Onceler was making money, making a community and getting people jobs so he wanted to carry this on.'  -  Cerianne.


'The Onceler could have only cut off the furry stuff 
(of the Truffula tree) not the whole tree.' - Wilson
'The green man (the Onceler) could have only 
taken some of the trees (and left some).' - Kurtis
'The Onceler could spend some of the money 
that he had earnt on (Truffula) seeds.'  - Kurtis

We then demonstrated our knowledge by showing them on a story map.

Similar stories...
Chloe thought of another story that has character vs nature conflict:
The Three Fishing Brothers' Gruff


A tale about caring for our environment and protecting the earth's resources. 
Once upon a time, there lived three mean and greedy brothers called Gruff. They fish and fish until Poverty Bay is empty, and so resolve to find somewhere else to catch their fish. But watch out, Minke Whale, the Guardian of the Ocean isn't happy and the neither are the townspeople of Poverty Bay! 

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