Thomas King’s novel Green Grass Running Water contains a peculiar intersection in the character of Doctor Joe Hovaugh. The novel is full of references (of varying degrees of subtlety) to historical and literary figures, from General Custer (Latisha’s ex-husband George and his jacket) to Louis Riel (Louie, Ray, and Al) (Flick, 2013). Joe Hovaugh appears to evoke the Christian Jehovah: their names are nearly homophonous, and he is introduced in the novel contemplating his garden and facing to the East, the direction of new beginnings in Cherokee symbolism. At the same time, he is unmistakeably linked to the work of Canadian scholar and critic Northrop Frye: late in the book (p. 389), he is depicted “turning [his] chart… literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogic” – the same categories that Frye employs in his theoretical work Anatomy of Criticism. Rarely is a critic hailed as a creator, still less a creator of the universe. But when considered in the context of King’s motif of clashing mythologies, this incongruity begins to make sense.
In The Bush Garden (2011), Northrop Frye describes Canadian identity as that of a nation that has failed to assimilate the vastness of its wilderness, creating a “garrison mentality” against the indifference and peril of nature. He offers a three-stage process (p. 221): “English Canada was first a part of the wilderness, then a part of North America and the British Empire, then a part of the world;” but it went through these too quickly to find its identity at each step. In other words, this new Canada is a country not in ownership of its own backyard; and in a similar way, Frye’s caricature in the novel is fixated on nature but does not engage with it. Hovaugh is always looking out of windows, whether from the desk of his clinic or the driver’s seat of his Karmann-Ghia – or the Cafe in Blossom: “It was raining outside and it looked as though it was going to be gloomy for a while. And disorganized.” (p. 314, emphasis mine.)
But Frye’s summation of Canada does not account for any First Nations perspective; it simply does not enter the question for him. As with the observations of Asch (2011) and King (2004) that Canadian scholarship places the beginning of Canada’s history at the moment of European arrival, thereby minimizing the vast preceding timespan, Hovaugh’s arrival in Canada in the novel is really two arrivals: the European-style academic, and the Christian Creation myth. But as King’s telling makes clear, the Christian mythology that European colonization brought to Canada was a fragile foreign bud compared to the spiritual figures that lived there already. That is why Jesus, God, and various figures of English literature squabble presumptuously with Indigenous spiritual figures such as First Woman (Cherokee), Changing Woman (Navajo), Thought Woman (Pueblo), and Old Woman (Blackfoot) in the spiritual retellings that shadow the main narrative.
Thus, Hovaugh represents a Canadian consciousness that appeared late in the cultural history of the land and yet presumes to insert itself at the beginning. Frye also has little compunction in drawing an unqualified distinction between the “sophisticated” colonial culture and the “primitive” Indigenous one. Likewise, Hovaugh says that “In ancient times… Primitive people believed in omens,” but “What they thought were omens were actually miracles.” (p. 238) A seemingly frivolous distinction, unless considered in the context of European colonization and the mythological canon it carries.
Asch, Michael. “Canadian Sovereignty and Universal History.” Storied Communities: Narratives of Contact and Arrival in Constituting Political Community. Ed. Rebecca Johnson, and Jeremy Webber Hester Lessard. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2011. 29 – 39. Print.
Austgin, Suzanne. “Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and the Effects of White Contact on Pueblo Myth and Ritual.” Hanover College History Department. Hanover College. Spring 1993. Web. June 24, 2015.
Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999). Web. June 24, 2015.
Frye, Northrop. The Bush Garden; Essays on the Canadian Imagination. 2011 Toronto: Anansi. Print.
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.
King, Thomas. “Godzilla vs. Post-Colonial.” Unhomely States: Theorizing English-Canadian Postcolonialism. Mississauga, ON: Broadview, 2004. 183- 190.
“Changing Woman – A Navajo Legend.” Native American Legends. FirstPeople.us . n.d. Web. June 24, 2015.
“The Legend of the First Woman – A Cherokee Legend.” Native American Legends. FirstPeople.us . n.d. Web. June 24, 2015.
“Old Man and Old Woman – A Blackfoot Legend.” Native American Legends. FirstPeople.us . n.d. Web. June 24, 2015.
Hello!
I really enjoyed reading your post. I especially enjoyed your description of academic-historical, literary, etc.-perceptions of Canada before and after colonization and in the modern world. I have one question though, I was wondering how can Christianity be described as a fragile foreign bud as it has taken over the entire world? I think the interwoven nature of the spiritual side in GGRW, actually demonstrates one of the strengths of Christianity that allowed for it to seep into many very diverse communities-adaptability. Christianity adapted ancient myth and legend into the religion and adopted the ancient myths of the new countries it travelled to-as lit students we are all familir with Beowulf and its roots.
Interested to hear your thoughts.
Gretta
Hi Gretta!
That’s a fair point. This is where my interpretation of Christianity and my assessment of King’s interpretation would diverge slightly. I certainly agree that the history of Christianity demonstrates enormous power to syncretize and assimilate, although it must be added that in the case of North America (and indeed elsewhere) it had a lot of help from conquest and disease. In Green Grass Running Water, Joe Hovaugh is presented as a confused, panicky, and ultimately impotent figure; meanwhile God and Jesus in the spiritual narrative are querulous and even more impotent – supernatural events like Creation, the Great Flood, the impregnation of Mary, and Jesus calming the sea are all attributed to Indigenous spiritual figures.
Clearly the story is presenting to us a vision of a weak, insecure, faltering Christianity – but the fact that Christian figures appear in the myths at all cannot but acknowledge their importance. What exactly to make of this depiction, i.e., what real phenomena it might be connected to, is ambiguous. I can think of three main interpretations:
1. In myth, Indigenous people and spiritual figures alike are sent to Fort Marion. Therefore, Christianity in North America was always weak, and was successfully imposed on Indigenous culture only by force.
2. Joe Hovaugh, a symbol of God, lives in the fictive present. His mythic counterparts are at least willful, but he is “getting older, becoming reflective.” Therefore, contemporary Christianity is weak, perhaps corresponding to the gradual decline of faith in the Anglo-European world.
3. The book acknowledges the power of Christianity, but as an instrument of colonial hegemony. Therefore, the transfiguration and parody of Christian figures is a direct act of spiritual resistance.
My personal reaction to the book leans toward 2. On the other hand, it’s part of the general logic of myth that calling something weak, and being believed, is one way to make it weak; so the interpretations are not entirely incompatible.
King speaks to this motif of conflicting worldviews more directly in the first chapter of “The Truth About Stories,” which might provide a clue as to where his sentiments would lie. I hope this is clear enough! Please be in touch with any further thoughts.
~Mattias