The reaction from both my audience and myself to Leslie Silko’s story is that evil must have already existed in the world one way or another. In King’s novel, the “fear and slaughter, disease and blood” recited by the Witch, must have happened before for the witch to know of it (9). The text never assures that the Witch’s story was original; therefore, she merely spread the idea of evil or brought it back to the world.

Here is how I told the story out loud:

“One witch brought evil to the world.”

Immediately, I was interrupted requesting the definition of evil along with the gender of the witch. I defined evil as anything sinful or negative. It is intriguing how the gender of the witch mattered to my audience; maybe it is because Eve was the first to eat the forbidden fruit. It seems as though I took Leslie Silko’s story and compressed it within a short sentence but my story telling style usually starts of broad and goes into detail. After making it clear that the gender is unknown, and that the race of the witch is non-human, I continued with:

She brought evil into the world to win a competition among witches. Other witches would do spells, bubble potions, and the competition was generally friendly and fun. It is assumed that the other witches have had these get-togethers before, while this particular one occurred in a cave. It is also assumed that none of the other witches performed anything that was “evil.”

Yes I did raise my hands to perform the “quote and unquote” gesture.

The Witch of concern performed her trick last, which was horrifying to even the other Witches. They asked her to undo it, but as stories are, they are irreversible. I concluded with “and this is how evil came into the world.”

The most interesting discovery I have made with this story is realizing the power of stories. Stories sound very pleasant, as in bedtime stories. However, stories also communicate thought and memory, the most powerful tools of human beings. That is why totalitarian governments spend so much time dealing with censorship. Critical thinking and the sharing of ideas deals far more damage than simply fighting a regime physically. On the other hand, the potential consequences of planting a scary, sinful, or evil idea in someone’s head are infinite. Sometimes, a string of words can haunt a human being for life; in the same way Thomas King will be forever haunted by the fact, communicated by a story, that his father never shared his existence with his other family members.

Milton, John. A Critical Look at the Role of Responsibility in John Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.

Muncaster, Phil. “China’s Censors Censor Press Censorship Report.” • The Register. N.p., 13 Feb. 2014. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.