4) In her article, “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel,” Blanca Chester focuses on an analysis of Northrop Frye as Dr. Joe Hovaugh. She writes;
In Hovaugh’s carefully constructed world, meaning lies in circular and closed systems. Thus he draws a “deliberate circle around Parliament Lake.” He then draws another, and another (324). King’s narrator then describes Indian “gifts” and white “gifts” for us (327), defining each in a play on paradigmatic opposites (327). Real Indians don’t exist in this system. But in the novel Hovaugh’s organization of the world ultimately reveals itself as petrified and static. His is a world where circles are no longer cycles—where circles construct borders around knowledge. His world, unlike the world of the old Indians, exhibits a garrison mentality. 52
For this blog assignment, I would like you to find and describe other examples of Dr. Joe Hovaugh’s character that reflect aspects of Frye’s literary theories and ideas about the Canadian imagination – or, any element of Frye’s thought that you hear echoed in the pages of Green Grass Running Water.
In Blanca Chester’s article, “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel,” she provides analysis of Northrop Frye as Dr. Joe Hovaugh. She asserts that Dr. Hovaugh, and thus, Frye, perceives that “the wild physical environment (or nature, of which “Indians” are seen as a part and settlers are not) is ominous seen from a (civilized) perspective” (Theorizing 49). In the character of Dr. Hovaugh in Green Grass Running Water Thomas King challenges Frye’s assertion that Canada’s literary imagination is reflective of the vast emptiness of the physical environment. He challenges this by juxtaposing Dr. Hovaugh’s fear of an untamed natural environment and his controlled Florida garden with the fluidity of the movement and context of the “Indians”. In providing this contrast, King is demonstrating that the literary void that Frye claims in Canada is the fault of Frye in not considering First Nations stories in his narrow categorization of literature. This paper explores examples of Dr. Hovaugh’s fear and horror of the vastness of the Canadian landscape and the how King’s “Indians” represent the chaos of the natural environment that he must contain.
The first example that we see of Dr. Hovaugh’s discomfort with uncontrolled nature comes immediately in his introduction in King’s story. As he is introduced, there is a description of Dr. Hovaugh in his Florida (in the more civilized United States) asylum (see reference in link to Dr. Hovaugh and the significance of Florida) office with his desk “a rare example of colonial woodcraft” that “reminded him of a tree cut down to the stump” (GGRW 16) looking out the window and admiring the manicured garden. The garden is purposefully landscaped with daffodils in lines, arbors and swans. Dr. Hovaugh is from his reverie by news that the “Indians” are gone from the hospital (and the police engaged to capture them). His fear is palpable as he “seemed to shrink behind the desk as though it were growing, slowly and imperceptibly enveloping the man” (GGRW 17). The impact of news of the “Indians”’ freedom on his consciousness is to cause the tree like desk, although polished and stripped to grow and swallow him. His reaction is to suggest that he get a pair of peacocks, introducing further artificial order into the landscape to calm himself. Dr. Horaugh is only comfortable with the “Indians” and nature when they are carefully controlled.
Dr. Hovaugh brings Babo to Canada in pursuit of the “Indians”. While Babo takes the supernatural for granted, even Dr. Horvaugh seems to uncomfortably realize that they are “led” by a light in the ominous Canadian sky, “some omen or miracle” (GGRW 238) toward the “Indians”. Before their arrival at Blossom Lodge, King demonstrates the First Nations literary imagination with Coyote telling the creation story of Thought Woman. The story defies the mythic Frye definition as Coyote interacts and jokes about the Christian creation story with Thought Woman and the border guard. Just before they arrive at Blossom Lodge the “Indians” invoke the threatening Canadian nature and create a storm with “the world rolled up dark and alive with lightning” (GGRW 173). Dr. Hovaugh needs Babo to help capture the “Indians” as he does not understand how they think. Dr. Hovaugh is completely disoriented in this untamed land as “the wind blew Dr. Hovaugh’s coast up his back and rolled his hair over his face” and the “coat rattled around his stomach” (GGRW 275). King has the “Indians” create chaos to emphasize the futility of Frye’s attempts to order and control the “Indians” and ignore their stories.
In Green Grass, Running Water King takes on Frye’s sense of the emptiness of the Canadian landscape and literary imagination. Interwoven creation First Nation stories in the narrative of Dr. Hovaugh’s attempts to capture and contain the “Indians” in the chaotic Canadian landscape demonstrate King’s view that the absence of literary imagination in this harsh environment is in fact Frye’s limitation. Perhaps Frye realizes his own waning relevance in Canadian literary theory as Dr. Hovaugh’s “mystical and reclusive retreat to his mythical garden also suggests his own escape into timelessness, into a world of his own mythic making” (Chester 50).
Works Cited:
Chester, Blanca. “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999).Web. April 04/2013.
Flick Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.” Canadian Literature 161/162 (1999). Web. April 4th 2013. https://blogs.ubc.ca/courseblogsis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216-sis_ubc_engl_470a_99c_2014wc_44216_2517104_1/files/2013/11/GGRW-reading-notes.pdf
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism : Four Essays. University of Toronto Press, 2006. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
Frye, Northrop. Northrop Frye on Canada. University of Toronto Press, 2003. Web. 10 Mar. 2016.
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.
Images:
Marmon Silko, Leslie – TiyospayeNow. “Thinking of Thought Woman” Web 10 Mar. 2016. http://www.scoop.it/t/indigenous-sovereignty
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