The Wastelands:Describe How Different Characters Deal With the Main Conflict

One part of a good book is having characters with very different and dynamic personalities so that all the characters don't do the same thing always helping make the book more interesting. I believe Stephen King does a good job of making all of his main characters unique. The three main characters of The Wastelands are Roland, Susannah, and Eddie. They all have different ways of dealing with conflict

The conflict in the book begins with one of the members of the group, Eddie, being chased up a tree by a cyborg bear. The bear is described as, "... a shaggy tower with reddish-brown eyes. Those eyes glowed with fever and madness. His huge head now wearing a  garland of broken branches and fir needles, swung ceaselessly from side to side."(King 20-21)

A depiction of the bear

The leader and teacher of the group is Roland. He deals with the conflict by taking charge. He tries to save Eddie's life by telling Susannah how to kill it and charging her with saving him, leaving no room for argument on anything else. He doesn't just do this because he feels like he can't though, he also does it as a test of Susannah's newly learned skills. When told later by his companions that this may not have been the safest option since he was much better with fighting he acknowledges this but tells them that he still believed it best overall. This shows his one-minded and uncompromising way of thinking and is ideas that real action will truly show how well someone learned, even if during that real action someone could get hurt.

Susannah deals with the conflict by looking to the most experienced with fighting of the group, Roland, to see what to do. When he tells her she must kill it to save Eddie, she argues at first that she may miss her target and have the bear turn and kill both of them before killing Eddie and that Roland would be much more suited to the task. When Roland pushes her though, she remembers her lessons and manages to hit her target, saving Eddie. This helps revisit the idea of self-doubt she has from earlier chapters while also showing her want for the least risky option when someone's life is at risk but her willingness and resolution to do whats needed.

Eddie had the hardest time in this conflict as he was the one being chased by the bear. When he realizes that it is coming Eddie deals with it by thinking quickly through all his options and their consequences. When he realizes that his first courses of action will get him killed he tries to think a bit more outside the box and realizes he could try to climb a tree until, hopefully, Roland and Susannah came back and saved him. This shows his resourcefulness and the conviction he has in his group.