Contrastive Conflict Comparison
"The only kind of bad conflict is unresolved conflict" (Berkana). In Wayland Drew's novel, "Halfway Man", the least effective solutions to conflict always resulted in an unresolved conflict. In the story, three types of conflict resolution were demonstrated, however, only one of them was effective. Both verbal persuasion and physical violence were used to try and solve conflict in the story, but Travis's method, intelligence, was most successful in resolving the conflict.
The least effective way of dealing with conflict resolution shown in "Halfway Man" was verbal persuasion because of the negative backlash. When Travis and Jenny were protesting on the bridge just outside of Prince Rupert, "the sergeant came up and said good morning and he asked if [they] would please step aside so the trucks could cross the bridge, and when [they] didn't move, he asked again" (Drew 66). When Travis and Jenny were approached by the sergeant, their initial reaction was not to obey his command to leave the bridge; therefore the sergeant's method of dealing with this conflict was not effective.
Travis
Travis-2
Travis the Scottish bandThis same ineffective verbal conflict resolution is present not only in Travis's life, but also in the stories he told. In the story Travis narrated entitled South Wind, the main character Many Arms was approached by Nokomis who wanted to stop Many Arms' greediness. Nokomis approached Many Arms and said, "We've come to you because you are a major problem to us [â¦] You're so big and fat and you can hardly move anymore. [â¦] Many Arms, the fact is we're at our wits' end. We don't know what to do with you" (Drew 120). Many Arms responded saying, "How dull! I can't do that! Impossible!" (Drew 121). Once again, the character completely disregarded the idea of conflict resolution. Many...