In order to tell us the story of a stereo salesman, Lionel Red Deer (whose past mistakes continue to live on in his present), a high school teacher, Alberta Frank (who wants to have a child free of the hassle of wedlock—or even, apparently, the hassle of heterosex!), and a retired professor, Eli Stands Alone (who wants to stop a dam from flooding his homeland), King must go back to the beginning of creation. Why do you think this is so?
I chose to answer question #1 for this week’s assignment—I felt that it was particularly interesting because creation stories and stories of an earlier time that are based in mythology play a significant role in the book, and it’s something that has come up several times in the previous lessons.
I think part of the reason that King needed to tell these earlier stories is because they continue to live on in the present and affect our interpretation of more modern stories. The old stories act as a context that allow us to more fully understand, in much the same way that, as I noted in an earlier blog, Harry Robinson seemed to argue for the importance of understanding the cultural context.
Starting with the beginning of creation is one way that the story tries to shake us out of our own Christian context, which most of us have probably absorbed whether or not we are religious. The character of GOD is no longer the creator of everything, but just one mythological figure who came along afterward, and a somewhat undignified one at that.
Including the rewritten story of Adam and Eve has a similar effect of destabilizing the assumptions we might hold. Most of us probably wouldn’t question why Adam’s name appears first whenever we talk about the story, but by listing the “First Woman” first, the story invites us to wonder. Changing Adam’s name to “Ahdamn” also makes him seem much less noble and more ridiculous. The story of Noah’s Ark is given a similar treatment: by the time we’re given the image of Noah as a whiny would-be rapist who loves big breasts and runs around in poop it’s very difficult to take him seriously.
Alberta’s unconventional desire to have a child without marriage or sex breaks the rules of our creation stories, so it makes sense that King’s attempt to destabilize those stories and introduce new ones might make it easier for us to understand her. And even Eli’s desire to stop the dam is probably more understandable in the context of a creation story that is more based in nature.
Starting with creation stories also has the effect of showing the reader how all of these stories are connected to each other and emphasizes that these stories are not always linear constructions with a simple beginning, middle, and end, as we often think of them.
I wrote the above without having heard King’s own ideas about what he’s doing, but when I started looking for his interpretation I found that it seemed quite close to mine. I’ll leave you with a quote from an interview he did with Peter Gzowski that seems to sum up his intention:
I started off […] working on the assumption that Christian myth was the one that informed the world that I was working with. And the more I got into the novel I discovered that I couldn’t work with that: it didn’t give me enough freedom to work with my fiction, so all of a sudden one day I thought, my god, why don’t I just recreate the world alongmore Native lines, and use Native oral stories—oral Cretaino stories—rather than the story that you find in Genesis. So I went back, and I began to use that as my basis for the fiction, and then […] sort of [dragged] that myth through Crhistianity, through Western literature and Western history, and see what I came up with.
Works Cited
Clenshaw, Ray. “The Raven and the First Men by Bill Reid.” Flickr. <https://www.flickr.com/photos/rayzilla/8067705775/>
“Peter Gzowski Interviews Thomas King on Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature. <http://canlit.ca/pdfs/articles/canlit161-162-Peter%20(GzowskiKing).pdf>
Hi Cecily,
The idea that most of the Western world, religious or otherwise, grows up in a Christian framework is really interesting. Reading the novel, I was really struck by the vignettes of religious characters despite being raised in a secular household; it was surprising to see how much Christianity has permeated my life despite never having sought it out. Anyway, I agree that the novel needs to subvert those traditions in order to communicate its story, and think it does a great job of doing so.
Thanks for the great interview you linked – I will be sure to keep that in mind when re-reading the novel for my term paper.
Hey Cecily,
Great post. I’ve heard it said that every single story has been told already, only in different ways in different cultures across different times. I think it was a Jungian concept that there is a collective consciousness of narratives and archetypes that all people identify with, such as hero stories, star-crossed lover stories, quest stories, etc. Do you think that’d be an interesting perspective to answer this question as well, especially considering the rather mundane nature of these characters lives? They’re very ordinary people living ordinary 20th-century lives with career, family, and relationship problems many people would relate to. Yet, using a creation story as a backdrop to their more ordinary stories somehow elevates their stories into something grander, as if we are all experiencing it as a collective. Much like how all cultures and all peoples experience creation (and creation stories).
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Char
P.S. More about Jungian theory and archetypes: http://www.carl-jung.net/collective_unconscious.html
Hi Cecily,
Great post. I agree most wholeheartedly with your work on destabilizing the Christian creation story. One thought that I wanted to throw your way – perhaps it has already crossed your mind – is that Alberta’s conception of the child is actually entirely similar to how Mary is said to have conceived Jesus. For me, this echoes Christian tropes. What do you think?
You also mention Adam’s name change. Did you also notice how all the Old Indians tell the story of a Christian archetype alongside a literary figure?
🙂
Hannah
Thanks for your comment! My interpretation from the interview with King that I linked at the end of my post was that Indigenous and Christian myths are very much intertwined, since the Christian ones are such a big part of our current world. So I think that explains the presence of Christian tropes that might come up in characters like Alberta or in the Old Indians’ stories.
It also occurs to me that perhaps King is trying to rewrite these stories, which requires using the Christian mythology as a base. And perhaps this ties into the importance of retelling stories and getting them that’s stressed so much in the novel?
Hey Cecily,
I really enjoyed your blog, you made some excellent points. King in his work does try to break the traditional creation stories that we hear, but lets us be aware of what the popular ideas were about. Through these connections of stories we are able to understand what he wanted to get across, that no matter how the stories changes the overall meaning stays the same.
My house wasn’t overly religious, but my grandparents were very set in their ways so we were very well versed in what they believed even if we didn’t. It is interesting the different ways these stories make you think depending on what you think already.
Thanks for your blog!
-Kathryn
Hi Cecily,
I read Alberta’s apparent desire for not having sex as part of her need for less intimacy. Sex is called “making love” for a reason–it’s very intimate, and it’s hard to (not) become attached. However, your insight that it kind of destabilizes the notion of a creation story is amazing.
SPOILER ALERT!!!:
Nonetheless, the way she seemingly gets pregnant in the end is a nod to the Virgin Mary.