2. Coyote Pedagogy is a term sometimes used to describe King’s writing strategies (Margery Fee and Jane Flick). Discuss your understanding of the role of Coyote in the novel.

“Because Green Grass Running Water is populated with both subtle allusions and overt references to a multitude of characters from popular culture, it is no surprise that students should, at first glance, attempt to understand this Coyote via the attributes of a cartoon character from their childhood viewing of American television (and there is little doubt in my mind that this first impression is one King would like you to think about).” – Paterson, ENGL 470A

There’s something about Coyote that I’d like to relate to Wile E Coyote in a sense that yes, he is a trickster and King seems to present him as the Native version of a God, and Wile E Coyote creates and builds contraptions to capture and control the Roadrunner, but it all has its consequences and downfalls. He can create earthquakes but it caused the dam to burst, his abilities with singing and dancing destroys the structures he created and brings upon terrible rain and storm upon everyone.  Much like Wile E, who has the power to create and put up the traps, still brings forth destruction (mostly to himself). With that much power, I think King is trying to showcase, comes a great responsibility and production of balance. Coyote’s creations has its negative effects, bringing his actions into a circle from good to bad, beginning to end, positive to negative. It’s a representation of how the Aboriginals value the symbolism of balance through a circle.

“Circles are part of the natural order of creation – from the water cycle to the seasons to the cycle of birth and death – and as such, the circle signifies transformation and movement. Aboriginal peoples in North America use the circle to illustrate their worldviews using models such as the medicine wheel, which illustrates the human journey through life and explains relationships between various aspects of creation, both seen and unseen. The circle is infinite and continuous. It is a way of understanding and explaining interrelatedness and interconnectedness (see Interconnectedness).”

This underlines King’s writing of the Coyote as the Native God. And his role as a trickster is not necessarily either an entirely good thing or bad thing, but a development of balance of his powers and creation. King also highlights the idea of retelling or updating the stories or mythologies in our world. From Christian to Native beliefs, King incorporates these different creation stories and revamps them a little, show how they can fix our world. The dam is a prime example. Coyote creates the earthquake that tears down the dam. He destroys what he creates. That beginning to end that, again, shows the balance. It shows the importance of balance in our lives. King somehow is able to tell us to break the dams in our lives, let that water flow down freely. And if something bad can come out of the good, then some good can come out of the bad. It’s a cycle, the way of life. It all comes to full circle.

The Coyote is King’s allusion to a mixture of both the Christian God that creates and the Native American God that practices though their unique dancing and singing.

Work Cited:

Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 3.2 Introduction to Green Grass Running Water.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genres May 2015. UBC Blogs. Web. 16 July 2015.

“Aboriginal Worldviews.” Dragonfly Consulting Services Canada. 2012. Web. 16 July 2015.

Ziccardi, Andrea. “Wile Coyote e Road Runner – Catapulta.” Online video clip. Youtube. 24 May 2011. Web. 16 July 2015.

UPDATE: I completely did the wrong section at first (due to different editions – I completely ditz out and not even checked if I was doing the right one), so this post will be kind of long because I’ll be posting about the correct section while also leaving the wrong one since someone left a comment about it, so it’ll be included as a reference to that dialogue.)

GGRW start: This according to Hawkeye: …”[273]. End: “This is a lot of fun, Coyote says ….” [278]. – Paterson, ENG 470A

My section covers two parts: One is Hawkeye’s turn about his story of the creation. It involves an Old Woman that is looking around and finding things to eat, and that’s when she finds a big tree with a tender root. She finds it tasty and wants to eat it but the tender root jumps back into the hole and beneath the big tree. The Old Woman then grabbed a digging stick to follow the tender root, but she ended up digging so much that she fell into the hole and into the sky.

The story is a biblical allusion to the story of Eve. King effectively blends the story of Genesis (2:4-3:24) and Native creation stories. King writes the Old Woman as a native version of Eve, who wants to eat the tender root (forbidden apple) who then falls into a hole (like Eve was banished from the garden).

The mix between Christian and Native mythical stories is only underlined when Coyote interrupts Hawkeye’s story,

“Hey, hey,” says Coyote, “I know this story. I can tell this story.”

“Are you sure? I says.

“You bet,” says Coyote. “This is the same story.”

With the way Coyote has been portrayed as a possible allusion to God (his ability to create rain and storms through dancing, start earthquakes, etc) his claim that “this is the same story” highlights the way King mixes the creation story of both Christian and Native stories. There is a self-awareness there, called out by Coyote himself (the Native version of God, much like the Old Woman is the Native version of Eve) that confirms such allusions.

The next section shows everyone singing happy birthday to Lionel while Bill Bursum aggressively tries to replay the death of John Wayne and Richard Widmark in the movie. This is a pop culture allusion that King incorporates to deal with the tension in his book. There has always been the glorification of Western people killing the Native Americans in movies. But in the section, King writes John and Richard being killed off and with the Native Americans as the heroes, reversing the racist and stereotype of contemporary culture.

This connects to the way everyone is singing to Lionel, “There was no place for Lionel to go, and he stood there as the old Indians and Eli…sang four choruses of “happy birthday” (330). Lionel wants himself to be the John Wayne, but is of course a Native and is then trapped in his own culture and away from the Western. But the way this section is showcased, with John Wayne being massacred while Lionel is celebrated, shows how King is able to revise the Western supremacy and crush it, offering the leading role not only to the Natives in the intertextual movie, but to Lionel.

Bill Bursum’s refusal to join in as he “stood there and pushing buttons, cursing, pushing buttons” highlights his stance on his (even subtly) disrespect against the Native Americans. Not only does he not join in in celebrating Lionel’s birthday with everyone, he keeps trying to press at the remote, a probable allusion to his (a white man) need to control the movie or perhaps the situation (the Native Americans), and gets frustrated when he could not. Which of course reflects his name in allusion to the Bursum Bill.

Work Cited:

The Interntional Version. Ed. Susan Jones. New York: Doubleday, 1985. Print.

–

“The Lone Ranger, Hawkeye, and Robinson Crusoe stood outside Bill Bursum’s Home Entertainment Barn and watched Ishmael dance in a tight circle.”

The gathering of all the Old Indians outside Bill Bursum’s is an allusion to the Bursum Bill and the challenges faced by the Native Americans. There’s something about their presence there, all together, as well as the mention of their location that alludes to the belonging of Indian land to the whites – the fact that they’re outside the barn, I think is the main focus and vital mention.

“That looks more Kiowa to me.”

The Kiowa Nation, who practiced their Sun dance for over a hundred years, “was crushed by both military and cultural pressures from the United States in the later part of the nineteenth century.” Their land and lives were taken away. It connects to the allusion to the Bursum Bill and its representation in the section of the book. The four Aboriginal men are gathered together outside a place that embodies the bill that challenged the Native Americans, doing the dance of a nation that was overruled, similarly, by white people.

And of course, Coyote does the dance that produces rain, acting very much like God (much like how he’s been throughout the book – the earthquake, the dam) who can change the weather by his own “Indian” means through his own version of a dance.

This connects to the contrast of the mention of remote controls with Dr. Hovaugh and Babo at the hotel. While Coyote is able to control the weather by himself, the “white” people represented by Dr. Hovaugh rely on remote controls and other manmade devices (credit card, car). This scene and the contrast to the four Indians in the previous chapter represents colonialism and the stark difference of the way of living between the whites and the non-whites (with the luxury of a hotel and cars versus their dances outside the barn respectively). It is the representation of the differences between Western inventions versus the Native American practice.

This difference then is shown to be blended in the next chapter when Lionel decides to attend the University of Toronto, mentioning how he would attend the Sun Dance with his parents while also inviting him to go to the movies with him,

“Maybe you and Mom would like to go to a movie in town.”

“Are you it’s no trouble?”

“No trouble at all. I’m thinking I’ll go to the Sun Dance with you, too.”

The coexistence of tradition with Western practices are modelled positively by Lionel. It’s the effect of colonialism with postcolonialism, where the impact of Western culture delivered on Native Americans are seen, but their own practices have not been diminished and can be incorporated alongside a postcolonial environment. (Perhaps it’s even an allusion to pop culture reference of the Sundance Film Festival).

Reflection:

I think my section, even if it’s relatively short, perfectly encapsulates the allusions King makes to colonialism, its effects and the showcase of differences between Native American culture and Western culture by demonstrating their own practices by their own means. It’s been truly fun to read and analyze, even though I’m not really sure if I may have dove into it far too much or not enough, but I still found King’s historic and cultural allusions in this section really effective.

Work Cited: