Introduction
The levels of conflict in Pierre’s Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse can be classified in the forms of environmental conflict, situational conflict, physical conflict, and psychological conflict. The story is centered on the predicament of Smith who seems to lead a ridiculously virtuous life amid a world full of chaos, unrest, and deceit.
Conflict with the environment
In his seemingly righteous indignation against chaos and trouble, Smith endeavors by all means to avoid all forms of associations and relationships that might lead him into conflict with the environment. He is content to be a passive observer of situations around him to an extent to which he appears to be a stranger to his very self. This earnest desire to shun conflict dislocates him psychologically from his physical environment so that throughout the discourse it appears like his wife Norah has to occasionally play the role of a link that reunites him back to reality.
However, it would appear that despite his best efforts, the reality of conflicts almost always seems to find its way to him. For instance, when Gabriele shows up in his backyard, he fails to act appropriately to safeguard his own welfare and that of his kin. He instead chooses to close ranks with Gabriele at least on the score of friendship. His uneasy association with Gabriele eventually draws him into the conflicts and he is finally jailed after he engages in a scuffle while in the courtroom.
The physical representation of conflict
The physical representations of conflict seem to catch up with him very often. On one occasion he is thrown out of a bar after a slight disagreement with some patrons. At this moment he had sought the intervention of the security men to have somebody thrown out but he is the one thrown out instead. It appears that the ever-present structures of conflict in the society will always resist his philosophy on non-conflict.
The psychological form of conflict
This psychological form of conflict seems to affect Smith at the various points where he seems to disagree with the popular opinion as represented in the counsel of his wife Norah. His repeated decisions to keep to himself create a form of conflict between the private world he creates, and the larger external world that is menacing and always poised to vanquish Smith’s private interests. In this psychological state of mind Smith creates a utopia in which he hides his unrealistic concepts of idyllic reality. In the end his determined advocacy raptures before a court of law leading to his eventual incarceration.
The locking up of Smith in symbolic terms represents the final triumph of the larger external world that is in conflict with his little and vulnerable private world. It is paradoxical that while he sought to lead a life of love, peace, and unity, he eventually loses his freedom in the midst of the raging forms of conflict. This point of the story captures the situational conflict. It might also be classified as a form of environmental conflict in the sense that the main character Smith finds himself in a social environment of trouble and strife.
Conclusion
The aspect of conflict in this novella serves to bring out the futility of the human agent in its desire to create an independent system that might withstand the pressures of wider social influence. The ironic loss of freedom for the seemingly righteous Smith is symptomatic of the erosion of values with the message that the conflict between an individual and a system will always go in the direction of the overbearing system.
Reference
Pierre, H. P. (1993). Breaking Smith’s Quarter Horse. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.