For this assignment, I was appointed the first thirteen pages of King’s novel, where Coyote, Dog/GOD, “I Says”, and the Lone Ranger (with guidance from *her* affiliates) attempt to agree on a viable introduction to the story. Upon my first impression, I would have classified this section as the “beginning” of the novel; however, as I began to discover the cyclical reality within the story, I changed my mind. This wasn’t the first or only time that I was compelled to reflect and alter prior conclusions in my reading of Green Grass Running Water.

                                  “Everybody makes mistakes,” said the Lone Ranger (14)

*(While my section only outlined pages 1-13, I soon considered it necessary to include pages 14 and 15 in my reading, which, I assume, are included in the 1993 edition of the introductory section.)

The section begins with Coyote’s dream. “Silly Dream” is loud, and has an appetite for control. When it finds out Coyote is “someone important,” it thinks about being a dog, until “it gets everything mixed up. It gets everything backward” (King 2). The dog with no manners shouts louder and louder, until he becomes that GOD.

There, says that GOD. That’s better (ibid).

While “that GOD” is left in anxious wonder about “where all the water [came] from,” King propels us into a new universe, where we are acquainted with Lionel Red Dog and Aunt Norma. As Lionel struggles to stay awake behind the wheel, Norma contemplates the blue and green carpet swatches on the dashboard, for it’ is “best not to make [a mistake] with carpet.”

Just as we begin to get comfortable, we are pulled from the back seat of Lionel’s car and are introduced to the four escapees from Fort Marion. They appear to be preparing  for a  journey. Robinson Crusoe lends Hawkeye his red shirt with the palm trees, and the Lone Ranger begins to tell a story.

Once upon a time…(11)

A long time ago in a faraway land…(12)

Many moons comechucka…hahahahahahahahahahaha (13)

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth…(14)

“Gha!” said the Lone Ranger. “Higayv:ligé:i.” (15)

“That’s better,” said Hawkeye (ibid).

Dog/GOD as a “Contrary”-Theme of Backwardness 

The Dog, according to Jane Flick, is considered a “lesser” form of Coyote- “and a god is a backwards kind of dog” (16). The fact that this dog is inferior to Coyote to begin with, even before he secures himself as a “contrary”, makes him a laughable character, not to be taken too seriously. The “silly” dog, in this way, becomes “that GOD” only through his obnoxious shouting and exaggerated self opinion. His title, his booming voice, and his self-pronounced “almightyness” are all, in this way, meaningless. With this, I couldn’t help but compare Dog/GOD to figures like Hitler, who (plagued with little man syndrome) attempted to inflate their reputations to match the size of their egos. This uncontrolled hunger for power, as we know, can become dangerous.

That GOD we soon learn, is THE Judeo-Christain God from the Old Testament (Ibid). By opening the novel with this scene, King sets suggests that his purpose is to undermine “canonical beginnings.” (Goldman 30).

Lionel Red Dog: With all of these connections to “backwardness,” it is impossible to ignore the significance of Lionel’s last name. As one of the “lost” characters in the novel, his aunt might agree that he, like Coyote’s Dream, is “backwards” in his thoughts about the world; he is going wrong direction. In response to his joke about the Lease Road, Norma says, “Lionel, if you weren’t my sister’s boy, and if I didn’t see you born with my own eyes, I would sometimes think you were white. You sound just like those politicians in Edmonton, always telling us what we can’t do” (King 7). It is significant that it is on the unpaved Lease road at the end of the novel that Lionel Red Dog changes directions. He finds his way “home.”

Beginnings

Volume 1:East Red – The Volume Heading on page 3 ( 6 in the 2007 edition) is presented in Cherokee Syllabary. Flick explains that the East Represents a New Generation, “just beginning to grow.’ If we consider Lionel, Charlie, and Alberta to represent the “New Generation,” we discover connections between their stories of growth and the representations of development within the Medicine Wheel.

Colonial/Fairytale Beginnings After assuring the others that it’s her turn to tell the story, Lone Ranger (First Woman) goes through four trial and error “beginnings” until she gets it right: “Once Upon a Time…” (11), “A long time ago in a faraway land…” (12) Both of these introductions suggest settler-invader “fairytale” influence; aka tidy linearity. They, of course, will not do.

Getting it Right

After trying (and failing) with a parody of Native story-telling, “Many moons comechucka…,”(13) and the opening of Genesis: In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth (14), Lone Ranger is left with one final option.

“Gha!” said the Lone Ranger. “Higayv:ligé:i.” (15)

For the first time, Lone Ranger speaks in Cherokee.  These words represent the “ceremonial opening of storytelling in a Cherokee divining ceremony” (Helen Hoy as quoted by Flick 16). The words encourage the audience to “Listen Up” (Goldman 31).

The Divining Ceremony involves the movement of pine-needles as they float on water. This ritual is used to read the future, and “playfully subverts the fixity of history in its official (meaning written) form by focusing on the possibilities yet to come” (Jennifer Andrews as quoted by Goldman 31). The idea of “fixed” directions and paths within history is successfully avoided.

Reflections

Here I am at 1000 words, and I feel as though I’ve barely scratched the surface. In fact, the more I researched, the more questions I had…and I’m still left with a lot of questions….

Mistakes-  There’s something significant here. While “everybody makes mistakes,” we are told that it’s “best not to make them” with carpet, or with stories (8;14). What is King getting at? I assume it’s connected with the themes of “starting over,” which speak to the circular structure of the narrative, but I couldn’t find any evidence to support this.

Red- From the colour of the Palm Tree shirt to Lionel’s last name, the colour red seems to suggest meaning in these first pages. After reading Erika’s notes on the Medicine Wheel I thought I had cleverly cracked the puzzle. Red corresponds with East on the wheel (as emphasized by the Cherokee Syllabary on page 6). Ok, but how are these pieces connected? I’m convinced theres something deeper here.

Chester, Blanca. “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel” Canadian Literature 161/62, 1999. Web http://canlit.ca/pdfs/articles/canlit161-162-Green(Chester).pdf

Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water” in Green Grass Running Water, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2007 ed. Print.

Goldman, Marlene. “Mapping and Dreaming: Native Resistance in Green Grass Running Water” Canadian Literature 161/62, 1999. Web http://canlit.ca/pdfs/articles/canlit161-162-Mapping(Goldman).pdf

King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water. HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2007 ed. Print.

#8. “…Maps chart territory and provide directions, they also create borders and boundaries and they help us to find our way. There is more than one way to map, and just as this novel plays with conflicting story traditions, I think King is also playing with conflicting ways to chart territory. What do you think lies at the centre of King’s mapping metaphor?

The road ran on in front of them, a pitch of hills and coulees that dipped and rose on the land. It had been a long time since Lionel had traveled the lease road. Normally, he came in through Medicine River on the road that ran to Cardston. That road was all asphalt and mileage signs and bill-boards. This road as a wild thing, bounding across the prairies, snaking sideways, and each time they came to a rise, Lionel that an uneasy feeling that just over the crest of the hill, the road would vanish, and they would tumble out into the tall grass and disappear (King 362).

The significance of this scene, as representative of the mapping metaphor in Green Grass Running Water, is compounded by the story Uncle Eli obliquely shares with Lionel as he guides him off the “official” route in a familiar, yet unpredictable direction: “Nephew, did I ever tell you why I came home?” (King 360). According to Marline Goldman, King’s effort to “undermine the legitimacy of the fixed Map, which [stood] for the sum total of Western culture’s hegemonic linear narratives” was successful through his “emphasis on oral traditions” (Goldman 31). Uncle Eli’s story is non-transparent, and while Lionel guesses reasons as to why his uncle returned home from Toronto, he is left in question. Eli’s aim was not to dictate the direction of Lionel’s future by setting himself as an authoritative example, rather, his motive was to inspire Lionel to find his own path “home.” To me, these distinctions between “fixed” and “discovered” directions within storytelling are what lie at the center of King’s mapping metaphor.

As Goldman asserts,”[o]wing to the close relationship he perceives between visual and written forms of codification, and the role they have played in securing the settler-invaders’ understanding of “reality,” King’s project also involves subverting a whole range of Western representational strategies, including the map” (Goldman 20). In a culture dictated by clean borders and bill-board lined expressways, it is difficult to comprehend our lack of directional freedom. This convention may be compared to the “reality” pre-determined for North American culture through settler-invader narratives: “There would be a conflict of some sort between the whites and Indians. And Iron Eyes would be forced to choose between Annabelle and his people…Iron Eyes would send Annabelle back to the fort and then go fight the soldiers…He’d be killed, of course and the novel would conclude on a happy note of some sort” (King 199). The linear predictability of the setter-invader narrative stands in stark contrast to circular and complex First Nations oral storytelling.  Settler-defined “borders” in this way, become both physical and spiritual obstructions of truth and freedom.

In the final chapters of the novel, as they arrive at the Sun Dance festival,  Lionel, Alberta, and Charlie begin to rediscover their paths “home.” However, by taking the exit off the linear path, it seems that their stories are just beginning.

King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.

Goldman, Marlene. “Mapping and Dreaming: Native Resistance in Green Grass Running Water” Canadian Literature Canadian Literature 161-162 (1999). Web. April 04/2013

“The Searchers” Theatrical Trailer (1956) Youtube. Web https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYOp3l9wL1k

For this blog assignment, I would like you to research and summarize one of the state or governing activities… Write a blog about your findings and in your conclusion comment on whether or not your findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility.

“Our oldest Canadians must be given the status of New Canadians or else they may never become true Canadians like the rest of us.” – Andre Renaud 1954 (as quoted in Bohaker and Iacovetta 435; emphasis added)

The policy I chose to explore for this assignment was The Canadian Citizenship Act of 1947. After some initial research, I became primarily interested in the Act’s ‘dual mandate,’ which involved the unification of the Canadian Citizenship Branch and the Indian Affairs Branch. This policy not only pooled Indigenous Peoples into a category of “outsiders”, but promoted the notion that white settler populations were inherently more “Canadian” than their Indigenous neighbours. Canadianism, in this context, was an ode to a British Christian heritage, to which “true” Canadians owed their “superior values” (Bohaker and Iacovetta 433). Despite its outward endorsement of non-white cultures, The CCA’s blanketed citizenship policy promoted values that were exclusive to British whiteness. Evidently, these findings support Coleman’s argument about the project of white civility. Through the Canadian Citizenship Act, ALL Canadian citizens were expected to adhere to a “specific form of [Canadian] whiteness.” (Coleman as quoted by Erika in Lesson 3.1).

In their article “Making Aboriginal People ‘Immigrants Too’” Heidi Bohaker and Franca Iacovetta explain that while European Immigrants were encouraged to retain fragments of a European identity, there was little room for Aboriginal Peoples to practice “old” customs or traditions within Canadian citizenship: “The programs aimed at Aboriginal peoples were far less respectful of Indigenous cultural traditions and political autonomy than were the immigrant campaigns of European customs” (430). These policies were evidently informed by the racist constructions that equate “civility” with whiteness, and “savagery” with anything or anyone other. 

The Canlit guide explains that while racialized Immigrants could adopt Canadian traditions and values in order to assimilate into the white settler society, there was a ceiling that prevented them from being as Canadian as those who were born white (Canlit Guide: Nationalism 1800s-1950s: Canadian Immigration and War). As Homi Bhabha famously illustrates, this notion was fundamental to the colonization process: “Almost the same but not quite…Almost the same but not white” (Bhabha 130). Non-white populations were expected to “mimic” their white “superiors,” but would never be considered equal as to ensure the rigid balance of power remained intact. I’m wondering how these policies differ. In fact, do they? Both policies involved the subjugation of non-white populations under a political regime; both policies required the abandonment of cultural traditions and customs to be replaced by supposedly superior (white) practices; and both policies were dependent on a constructed system of power, entrenched in racist ideology. 

In acknowledging our current systems of privilege and oppression in Canada, it may be confirmed that such ideologies have largely gone unchanged. Indeed, colonization remains an ongoing process.

Works Cited:

Bhabha, Homi. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse” Discipleship: A Special Issue on Psychoanalysis 28 (1984): 125-133. Web.

Bohaker, Heidi and Franca Iacovetta. “Making Aboriginal People ‘Immigrants Too’: A Comparison Of Citizenship Programs For Newcomers And Indigenous Peoples In Postwar Canada, 1940S–1960S.” Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (2009): 427-462. Academic Search Complete. Web. 

The CanLit Guide: Nationalism, late 1800s–1950s: Canadian Immigration and War

This post is a response to question #2: “In Wickwire’s introduction to Living Stories, find a third reason why, according to Robinson, our abilities to make meaning from first stories and encounters is so seriously limited.”

For Indians, power was located in their hearts and heads; for whites, it was located on paper (Robinson 16).

While words such as incapacity and inability are seldom used to self-describe in our own written histories, this lesson unveils the devastating limitations (born from the truth/untruth dichotomy) that make it difficult to extract meaningfulness or fluid understanding from first stories. The authority given to settlers’ written narratives has suffocated historical meaning and value from First Nations oral stories, such as ones retold by Harry Robinson. With this, the official historical narrative becomes a depthless, one-sided account, leaving the other side to be blindly discounted as an “untruth”. Wickwire indicates that the editorial process of transforming oral stories into written narratives suitable for publication contributes to the suppression of “real evidence and change,” thereby “transform[ing] what may have been a historical narrative into the more desirable pre-contact myth” (Wickwire 22-3). This systematized erasure of historical authenticity from oral narratives provides a third reason to explain our severe limitations in extracting meaning from the first stories. 

In lesson 2.2, Erika addresses the “two significant obstacles” that “stand in the way of understanding and making meaningful the first stories” (Paterson Lesson 2.2). The first she confronts is the process in which we collect, translate, edit and publish the stories (2.2). After publishing her first collection, Wickwire reflects on why she included some of Robinson’s stories at the expense of others:  “Along with several generations of scholars and others, I had been seduced by the Boasian paradigm which reified the mythological past and promoted the stereotype of the “myth-teller”- the bearer of the single, communal accounts rooted in the deep past… That Harry’s stories of white/ Aboriginal conflict had few parallels in the early collections did not mean that his predecessors had not told such stories. Early collectors simply did not have any interest in them” (Wickwire 28-29).   Wickwire’s realization not only reflects the authority assumed by collectors and editors to tailor the stories to fit the paradigm of “pre-contact myth,” but also emphasizes the inauthenticity that is born from these changes.

The second “significant obstacle” that contributes to our limitations in assigning meaning to the first stories was the installation of the Indian Act. The outlawing of the “dissemination and celebration of cultural knowledge and territorial rights amongst First Nations,” in addition to the introduction of residential schools, had a devastating impact on the storytelling tradition (Paterson Lesson 2.2). The political process of categorizing Indigenous stories as “untruths” in opposition to supposedly “true” settler accounts was a tool of assimilation that rested on a constructed dichotomy. For these important stories to survive, “[t]he storyteller must be able to pass the story on, and the listener must be present to witness the telling of the story” (Paterson 2.2) The Indian Act posed great limitation to these practices.

“To base ones entire analysis of consciousness…on one or a few traditional rituals and narratives, and then to conclude that that culture as a whole is in the mythic phase, lacking a concept of history, may reflect a lack in the investigative procedure more than a lack in the culture (Terrance Turner as quoted in Wickwire 22). This statement is applicable to each obstacle I have attempted to address here. All three “significant obstacles” rest on the construction that classifies First Nations oral stories as inherently “mythical” in opposition to “historical” settler narratives. Once we discover the limitations that are born from these violent assumptions, we may come closer to rediscovering meaning within first stories and encounters.

Armstrong, Jeannette C . History Lesson. Google Docs: 1998. Web.

Paterson, Erika. Lesson 2.2: First Stories. English 470A UBC Blogs. Web.

Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talon Books 2005. Print. 

We bought her used from my uncle when I was seven, the 91’ Toyota Previa. We had a new baby in our house, and my dad had to send the old Subaru to a farm. She was shiny and gold, with swivel seats and a sunroof. She had a CD player, but it would only play Zeppelin. Her horn was cheerful, like a wave hello, and she smelled like summer and gasoline. From Tofino to Spokane, we cruised the North West. Sometimes she got tired, but she would always get us home.

She was still gold, when I was thirteen, but her shine had been washed away. She smelled like dirt from my brothers muddy cleats, and my friends thought Zeppelin was lame. I made my dad drop me off a block from school, so the civics and neons wouldn’t see. He’d beep her horn and I’d scowl at her like I’d practiced. I got really good at it that year. After school, I met her two blocks away. I hated her, but she would always get me home.

I took her to a party, when I was sixteen. My parents had no idea. We stayed up late and listened to Zeppelin, while we pretended to like the taste of beer. I woke up in the morning to a call from my dad. Busted. I scrambled for excuses as I ran outside. She had two broken windows and a dent the size of Texas. I thought it was the last place I wanted to go, but she would always get me home.

My uncle died when I was eighteen. We held his hand until he let go. We left the hospital in a daze, and walked through parking lot to find her. We cried in her seats and listened to Zeppelin on low. She smelled like summer and gasoline. We knew it wouldn’t be the same, but she always got us home.

I’m 22, and “Van-Helsing” still gets us home. My friends and I took her on our annual trip to the Stampede last July.

Once, there was a Society.  Each member was designed with purpose, and was responsible for performing his or her natural assignment. While members differed in shapes, sizes, smells, and colors, they were equal. Not one member mattered more than the other, and not one assignment was more valuable than the next. While cooperation was critical, the Society’s success was dependent on each member individually, and their competency in completing their assigned task every day; every hour; every second.

All assignments, while unique, were necessary to the maintenance of order and function within the Society. Assignments included censorship, time management, distribution of resources, domestic and foreign defense, imports, exports, infrastructure, and much more.

Obviously, these assignments were monotonous, and to us, sound exhausting. Members of this Society, however, were designed to perform with impulsion, without question, and without even the slightest error.  In fact, the very notions of error and question were forbidden in the Society. To its members, they were unfathomable. 

Members of the Society did not have time for extra-curricular activities. They did not have time for family. They didn’t have time to put up their feet after a long day in the office. They were created for, and defined by, their work. No holidays, no work parties, no coffee breaks. No exceptions.

Members included E. Ye, responsible for detection of foreign activity; H. Eart, distributor and collector of valuable resources, and L. Iver, responsible for censorship of impurities that managed to filtrate inside. While these members knew better than to engage in trivial activities like socialization, they understood and appreciated the duties preformed by one another. Each knew the other by name and assignment, and respected their contribution to the Society’s cause. What that was, nobody knew.

 As time progressed, there was one member whose assignment (as Waste Management Assistant) became obsolete. With all the spare time on his hands, A. Ppendix became erratic and unpredictable. He allowed vices such as callousness and impetuosity get the better of him. His mind yearned for stimulation and he became curious about the forbidden concepts. Other members became intrigued by A. Ppendix’s behaviour, and allowed concentration on their own assignments to waver. Unpredictability, like error, was foreign to them, and therefore enticing. As the members lost consolidation, the Society began to falter.

Suddenly, A. Ppendix became so consumed by boredom that he exploded in an abrupt rage. The members had never experienced failure, let alone crisis, and plummeted into a state of turmoil. H.Eart found herself unable to keep up with the demands of the other members, and worked herself to the point of collapse. As foreigners began to infiltrate, L.Iver and K.Idney became too overwhelmed, and they too succumbed to exhaustion. One by one, the members fell into depletion. A. Ppendix, eventually realizing the seriousness of his action, attempted to mend himself, but it was too late. Once he committed the crime, the Society was damaged forever.

UPDATE: With help from beyond, the Society survived the attack. A. Ppendix was apprehended and forcibly removed, never to be seen again. While the members found comfort in this, A.Ppendix’s crime continues to haunt them today: “For, once a story is told, it cannot be called back” (King 10).

Perhaps it is obvious that I came up with this rendition of Leslie Silko’s story while I was in the hospital with Appendicitis. I could not breathe the word “evil” without associating it with my current (painful) state. In truth, my appendix did not actually burst, and I did not really go into organ failure, but, a story about a routine appendectomy would likely not be very stimulating for the people I chose to share this with.  This assignment allowed me to embellish a personal experience in order to translate my recent battle with “evil” to my audience.

On the topic of differentiating story and experience, “Sundance Films” recently released a seminar that engages with concepts of character and self within storytelling.  Writers such as Mindy Kaling, Kirsten Wiig, and Lena Dunham express the problematic tendency of people to “equate the words that are coming from their characters’ mouths with some real life [personal] philosophy ” (Dunham 1:48). Storytelling, as an artistic form of entertainment, relies on embellishment and creativity as a means of enticing an audience and encouraging their engagement.

While there were definitely some challenges (such as discovering my creativity window is only open between the god-forsaken hours of 1-4 a.m.) I really enjoyed the creative aspects of this assignment.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003. Print.

“Power of Story: Serious Ladies at 2015 Sundance Film Festival.” 25 January, 2015. Youtube. Web.

This blog is a response to Question #4:

In one of the truly awesome achievements of our education system, we teach those who come to us loving words and numbers to hate poetry and mathematics. What we are in fact teaching them is to make that false choice between reality and the imagination[.] [T]he choice between being marooned on an island and drowning in the sea (Chamberlain 127).

In a society obsessed with order, the notion of two valid and contradictory truths is unsettling. An urgency to categorize all that is “right” away from “wrong,” and to isolate “reality” from the playgrounds of the imagination ensures an eternal commitment to choice. Truth or Untruth? We have been conditioned to choose only one. It is likely that these self-imposed limitations are what make figuring out “this place called home” problematic. We are uncomfortable allowing ideas to co-exist in these contradictory domains; however, as Chamberlain explains, both truths are fundamental to discovering a “new relationship between strangeness and familiarity; mystery and clarity” (Chamberlain 122). In finding an “intersection” between two contradicting stories about the history of Canadian settlement, it becomes possible to reimagine home (Lesson 1.2 Paterson).

Chamberlain’s initial-and somewhat redundant-description of the history of settlement only offers one story. In this way, it dismisses the truths of entire populations, and shapes their injustices into narratives to be understood by non-Indigenous listeners. Chamberlain quotes, “no English words are good enough to give a sense of the links between an Aboriginal group and its homeland” (Chamberlain 79). Jeff Corntassle’s article “Indigenous Storytelling, Truth-telling and Community Approaches to Reconciliation,” illustrates how Indigenous storytelling not only passes down a narrative, but an attitude. To offer only one “truth”, made up of English words that do not give justice to the feelings or attitudes of the people who are being spoken for, and call it “history” is a major injustice and consequence of the truth/untruth binary.

In putting his initial idea of settlement “differently,” Chamberlain explains, “the history of many of the world’s conflicts is a history of dismissing a different belief or different behaviour as an unbelief or misbehaviour, and of discrediting those who behave differently as infidels or savages” (Chamberlain 78). This notion, unlike the other, acknowledges the existence of other truths; of other agencies. It questions the accuracy of a truth that dismisses alternate perspectives on the mere basis that they are different. It is important to note how difference, in this context, is associated with wrongness or inferiority. A story that does not support or reinforce the authoritative “truth” is compulsorily dismissed as an “untruth.” It is by this construction that the colonial voice has been handed the authority to govern the story of settlement in Canada.

While perhaps it is convenient to place stories on a hierarchy of truth to weed out the contradictions, it must be understood that all stories, regardless of who is telling them, live through the imagination: “[They] are all, in some sense, about someplace else or someone else. They take us to imaginary places, with imaginary people. They show us the importance of elsewhere. (Chamberlain 126). Corntassel’s piece introduces the concept of “restorying.” It is encourages a re-examination of the dominant cultures’ narratives to make room for a symbiotic truth; one that intersects stories that have been historically contradictory to “unsettle assumptions about the past” (Corntassel 138). While I’m not convinced I hear the music, I think we’re approaching the intersection!

Chamberlain, J. Edward. If This Is Your Land, Where are Your Stories: Finding Common Ground. Toronto: AA. Knopf. 2003. Print.

Corntassel, Jeff, and Chaw-win-is T’lakwadzi. “Indigenous Storytelling, Truth-Telling, And Community Approaches To Reconciliation.” English Studies In Canada 35.1 (2009): 137-159. 

My name is Ali Duncan, and I recently completed my undergraduate degree at UBCO with emphasis in History and English. Late in my fourth year, I was inspired by a Postcolonial theory course, which prompted my interest in what my professor referred to as “The Settlement Myth.” This link ( Settler Melankelownia ) outlines a critical engagement project we completed as a class, which, in its totality, questions the narratives that have been handed the authority shape the way we, as Canadians, tend to think about our past, our present, and our future.

Beyond Canadian “classic” literature and historical commemorations, one may simply analyze the street names in their neighbourhood to determine that colonial authority and memory continues to govern the current public perception.

Like the class I mentioned above, I expect this course to dramatically change traditional ways of thinking, not only about the Canadian historical narrative (i.e. what stories are considered worthy of memory)  but of modern political and social systems within our nation. I hope that we will be given the opportunity to read narrative and theory from voices that have been historically silenced or overlooked within the Canadian cannon.

In looking over the major assignment for this course, I was surprised, and admittedly a little intimidated, to see that we will be given the opportunity to collaborate and come up with ways of combatting current, and perhaps racist, ways of thinking about Canadian literature. While I have experience in critical studies, I have not yet been given the opportunity to engage with the material in such a way that positive solutions are born from critical analyses. I’m looking forward to seeing what we will come up with!

I expect it will be refreshing to take part in a Canadian literary course that does not focus on Anne of Green Gables, Flanders Fields, or works by Margaret Atwood. I won’t deny that works like these are significant within the Canadian cannon, but I am looking forward to engaging with culturally, racially, and spiritually diverse perspectives.

Really looking forward to collaborating with you all!

Cheers.

Jefferess, David. “Introduction” in Settler Melankelownia: Colonialism, Memory and Heritage in the Okanagan. May 2014.

Unfortunately I had some issues getting the linked copy of Coppola’s Dracula to work, therefore this post will discuss the nineteenth century themes within Stoker’s novel, with special focus on The Other, and more specifically, “The Fear of the East.”

Like many Gothic texts from the late nineteenth century, the major themes in Dracula were evidently impacted by social and political anxieties of that era.  The fear of degeneration, which ultimately refers to anxieties concerning the contamination of British purity by the Other is a recurring theme within Gothic texts and is overtly displayed in Stoker’s novel.  As the streets of London became more populated by Eastern European migrants, who had come to escape famine and seek opportunity, generalizations, encouraged by Social Darwinian theories began to circulate. It was commonly feared by the upper and middle classes that “mixing” with the migrants would ensure the eventual contamination of the British people.  This anxiety is illustrated overtly in the novel by Count Dracula, who is essentially represents an Eastern threat to “pure” British blood.

As a means of controlling anxieties in a time of British imperialistic and economic decline, the enemy- which essentially represented any threat to the power or purity of the empire- was animalized. We see this in Dracula as the Count is repeatedly described with animalistic or primitive traits before he becomes a “monster” in totality: “Once more I have seen the Count go out in his lizard fashion” (Stoker 29). This descriptions are also employed to describe the “weird sisters” during their visit to the Count’s castle: “There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck, she actually licked her lips like an animal.” To dehumanize the threat is to degrade its authority.

Further, we see how the East is compared to the West in terms of modernity and civility. Transylvania is constantly illustrated as a wild and untamed territory, void of order. Upon his arrival in Transylvania, Harker refers to it as “No-Man’s Land”, “mysterious”, unidentifiable” and “out-of reach” (Stoker 6). The reader is supposed to consider these descriptions in contrast to the civilized, lively, and structured streets of London.

Though these three points certainly do not sum up the theme of the “Eastern Threat” in Stoker’s novel, I hope they might give insight into the racist, sexist, and classist ideologies of the time.