In the short story “Adopted from Taseko”, by Christian Petersen, the setting contributes to the element of conflict. The place and time the characters in the story go hunting, creates a whole lot of problems for them. From the beginning of the trip to the very end, they encounter conflicts related to the setting; such as bad roads, extreme weathers, and very chilly temperatures.
On the journey to their destination, the main characters: a boy, his father and a man named Lars, drive for “several hours on the highway” (para. 2). The highway gives them some problems as the “tires {of their pickup whine} on the dry grey pavement, sunshine glinting on the hood, warm on the dash” (para. 2). They also have to drive in a place where there’s “gravel road and dust” (para.2), which is also part of the conflicts relating to the setting.
The weather and temperature were the major conflicts in this story. The whole point of this trip was to hunt some animals down, but because of the weather and temperature, the animals were nowhere to be seen. “Each day it [would grow] colder” (para. 12), “[causing] the animals [to move] west or south to lower valleys” (para. 12). It was bound to snow anytime; and on “the fifth day [of the trip] there were two inches of snow on the ground” (para. 14). The hunters knew they would “have real trouble getting out” (para. 14) and they needed to decide whether to leave or to stay. “The snow on the dry grass made [the inclines] slippery” which is why “the boy had trouble keeping up” (para. 15) with his father. With the “snow and wind rising” (para. 19), the branches were getting icy as they “clawed at their clothing” (para. 21).
Although the hunters faced many conflicts throughout their long, chilly journey which made the animals move to the lower valleys, they still managed to hunt down a moose. For the boy, the journey wasn’t probably as exciting as he had hoped it would be. He was actually more