Returning to Earth-Week 6, Post B

Quote:
"In July I had spent the afternoon with a brilliant forestry professor from Michigan Tech over in Houghton discussing the history of logging in the Upper Peninsula. At the cabin over a glass of wine he looked at me askance and said, 'Nearly all of the ill effects that you've traced to your family took place one hundred years ago or more. You're talking as if it were yesterday and still going on today and that you can do something to ameliorate the situation. You remind me of some of my save-the-world environmental students. I have great sympathy with their earnestness but such purity of heart can lead to radical self-deception. You have to learn to ignore the disastrous big picture and come down to the singular wetland or piece of forest you might wish to rescue. Of course you have to comprehend the science, the details of the whole picture, but cast your role as a screwdriver rather than a tank.'" (186-187) I found this quote extremely interesting because I had just stated in my previous post that I believed the theme to be forget and let go. This quote proves that I was correct in my belief that David holds events that occured in the past in such high esteem so as to believe that they are reversible. This quality forces him to be unable to let these problems go unresolved, when in fact, they cannot be resolved. David must learn to simply adapt to what the past events have created for him instead of trying to deflect what has already been created. David appears to be a rather resilient person, however, I believe that deep down he struggles to accept what the past has done for his life and works much too hard to try to change that. David's main conflict in this novel is with himself and his inability to accept that the what has occured in the past is set in stone and cannot be changed.