Humanity is insatiable. We want more and more, and production scrambles to sate our unquenchable greed. In Western Society, there are those that have and those that have not. The rich and the well off spend and spend, constantly upgrading, buying and consuming. Those who can't afford the latest iPhone or a nice house or expensive jeans still often want them. We have capitalism wired in our brains. However, possession is forever temporary. Everything ends and we all die alone. What I possess now will not be the same as what I possess in five years. My phone will be broken or lost, my clothes outgrown, my current relationships changed.

In The Secret River, the temporary nature of possessions is highly evident. You work, you earn, you buy. And it can all be taken away in a heartbeat. Thornhill takes what isn't his and, in turn, is dispossessed of his home and freedom and taken to unfamiliar land surrounded by an unfamiliar sea. In this way, Thornhill is dispossessed of the few things he never thought he would lose. But the cycle doesn't end there. Thornhill participates in the massacre of a group of aboriginals and so dispossess them of their lives. His, and …show more content…
From the now obsolete Neanderthals, to the Egyptian hieroglyphs that are still not fully understood, the cycle is etched in time. Rome wasn't built in a day but it did only take one to burn. As long as there have been possessions, dispossession has been lurking just around the corner. It always has and it always will be. Often, possessions are gained when someone else is dispossessed of them, and not always by choice. While some possessions may last a very long time, they didn't always belong to you and they're not always going to. Even the atoms you are made up of will disintegrate back into the fabric of the universe and become something new. No energy is created and none is destroyed, not even the energy you were formed