The Secret River

642 Words3 Pages
‘Poor Communication can create conflict’ In Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, poor communication is the major cause of many conflicts found throughout the text. The inability to verbally communicate, in the areas of knowledge, values and laws, led to conflicts of misunderstanding, frustration and violence. Misunderstanding of body language, in the areas of appearance, customs and technology, led to conflicts of violence and abuse. Most of these conflicts finally resulted in people having a feeling of immense fear. The inability between the blacks and the whites to verbally communicate meant that issues of knowledge, values and laws created conflicts of misunderstanding, frustration, violence and stealing. The Thornhills first moved to their new home at ‘Thornhill’s Point’, and this was where their first encounters and troubles with the blacks began. Will tried to communicate with them; however, one was just speaking ‘meaningless words’ to the other. Will tried to explain that this was now his own new piece of land and they had ‘all the rest’. Through the lack of communication and different values, the blacks could not comprehend this as their way of life was to share everything, including land and food. This then lead to other conflicts such as the blacks stealing crops from the Thornhills. ‘They made no effort to hide or run’ because according to their values, the food belonged to all. According to Will this was an act of breaking the law, however the blacks did not abide by these same laws and this caused a lot of confusion and frustration between the races. The failure to verbally communicate meant that they were unable to explain any of these issues to each other and this left them with no way to resolve these conflicts. The misunderstanding of body language was another form of poor communication which led to conflicts of violence and abuse. Both races had
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