Green Grass Running Water is full of events that directly or indirectly deconstruct the mythos of the colonizers in Canada and the United States. While the main narrative current mostly suggests a combination of mystery and aimlessness – Alberta’s (almost) fruitless search for someone to conceive with, Lionel’s attempts to find a mission for his life, Eli’s meditative last stand – the spiritual narrative that threads through it combines figures of Native American mythology with ironic and parodic representations of the colonizer’s mythos, religious, fictional, and quasi-historical. These parodies are not exactly vicious; but in playing with the most sacred figures of that mythos, King carries out the aim of making them harder to take seriously.
On pp. 68-69:
Who are you? says First Woman.
I’m GOD, says GOD. And I am almost as good as Coyote.
Funny, says First Woman. You remind me of a dog.
And just so we keep things straight, says that GOD, this is my world and this is my garden.
Your garden, says First Woman. You must be dreaming. And that one takes a big bite of one of those nice red apples.
Don’t eat my nice red apples, says that GOD.
I’ll just have a little of this chicken, if I may, says Old Coyote.
Your apples! says First Woman, and she gives a nice red apple to Ahdamn.
Yes, says that GOD, and that one waves his hands around. All this stuff is mine. I made it.
News to me, saws First Woman.
In this confrontation, GOD is portrayed as angry, but ineffectual. He claims to have created the world, but the indifference of Coyote and First Woman undermines this claim. “You can’t leave,” he shouts. “You can’t leave because I’m kicking you out.” The suggestion created in the vacuum left by this deflated figure, this toppled icon of omnipotence, is a world that was not created at all, or perhaps only by accident, through play.
Jesus gets a slightly kinder treatment, rather in line with his portrayal in Christianity as gentle and forgiving; but he is trimmed down as well through one of his well-known miracles.
Jesus calming the storm, as per canon.
So that Boat stops rocking, and those Waves stop rising higher and higher, and everything calms down.
Hooray, says those men. We are saved.
Hooray, says Young Man Walking on Water. I have saved you.
Actually, says those men, that other person saved us.
Nonsense, says Young Man Walking On Water. That other person is a woman. That other person sings songs to waves.
…
By golly, says those men. Young Man Walking on Water must have saved us after all. We better follow him around.
Suit yourself, says Old Woman. And that one floats away.
Earlier Young Man had shouted at the waves to cease, but they did not respond to him. Now when they halt on their own, with Old Woman’s encouragement, he attempts to take credit for it. A similar joke is played at the Son’s expense as was played on the Father: both shout uselessly when they want their way; and both attempt to take credit for what are really the miracles of nature. To King, Christianity presents a mythos of force and dictatorship which is really meaningless before the turning of nature’s wheel.
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.
“Aboriginal Worldviews.” Dragonfly. Dragonfly Consulting Services, Canada. n.d. Web. July 2, 2015.
Interesting!
Do you think that King is portraying Christian figures and angry and child like in thinly veiled criticism towards European culture and the settlers approach to colonization.
When seen through that lens I can just imagine the original settlers looking around and yelling “MINE!” just like a 5 year old child.
Do you think that this exchange is more of a statement on Kings thoughts about the Christian religion, the Christian religious structure, or its association to the colonizing forces?
Hi James,
I think that’s fair to say, and he’s certainly not alone in making that criticism; many people in North America (and also Australia) have said that Europe’s colonizing culture showed a lack of wisdom, reverence, and foresight. King, in his spiritual world, casts this as the immaturity of their heroes and their God, but it seems that his intention there is at least half-playful.
I’m not sure I could say which King is targeting more, but I think he would say that religion and culture are very closely linked. He says as much in the first chapter of “The Truth About Stories.” In that chapter, he uses the respective creation stories as part of an attempt to make the contrast between European and (pre-colonial) North American ways of thinking more explicit.
Thanks for your comment!
~Mattias
I enjoyed hearing your analysis of these scenes – it’s definitely something I was thinking about myself as I read them. I agree that these scenes really make the religious myths difficult to take seriously by only emphasizing ridiculous elements that already existed.
It sort of seems like King is removing the seriousness of Christian myths and providing alternative Indigenous ones to help us see things in a different way that isn’t as caught up in colonization. But that’s obviously a really big task for any book to accomplish. I’m curious to know what you think about the extent to which King did or didn’t succeed.
Hi Cecily! I’ve thought about that too; I think King’s work is a successful satire, but it doesn’t fare as well as an alternative mythical construction. I feel a tad of melancholy helplessness underneath the humour, like the damage that’s been done can never really be repaired, and like the worldview that King espouses will always be besieged by the Western cultural monoliths that surround it.
At the same time, bringing so many symbols together from various Indigenous cultures and unifying them within the concept of the wheel is quite a poetic achievement. I think I could see King’s work becoming part of a larger imaginative space shared by other Indigenous authors.
Hey Mattias,
I like how you emphasize ‘play’ in your comment, and the way in which King makes it harder for us to take the ‘mythos of the colonizer’ seriously. I find that King’s verbal play, his use of irony and of elements of the carnivalesque, as well as his surprising recombinations of Western narratives and First Nation narratives, contribute to this decolonizing literary play.
I also feel that this textual play seems to render all stories, whether they be of European or of First Nation making, both equally ridiculous as well as equally powerful at the same time. Thus, we are brought back to the level of story making itself, and are reminded perhaps of the necessity to routinely hold our own world shaping stories at an objective arm’s length.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I enjoyed reading your post.
-Laura
Thanks Laura! I agree, there’s definitely a need for self-consciousness when it comes to what we believe. I would also emphasize the importance of engaging in King’s kind of play as a way of liberating and expanding the imaginative world. Like other works of magical realism (Kappa Child and Monkey Beach spring to mind), Green Grass Running Water shows what an elevating experience this can be.