Question 1: First stories tell us how the world was created. In The Truth about Stories, King tells us two creation stories; one about how Charm falls from the sky pregnant with twins and creates the world out of a bit of mud with the help of all the water animals, and another about God creating heaven and earth with his words, and then Adam and Eve and the Garden. King provides us with a neat analysis of how each story reflects a distinct worldview. “The Earth Diver” story reflects a world created through collaboration, the “Genesis” story reflects a world created through a single will and an imposed hierarchical order of things: God, man, animals, plants. The differences all seem to come down to co-operation or competition — a nice clean-cut satisfying dichotomy. However, a choice must be made: you can only believe ONE of the stories is the true story of creation – right? That’s the thing about creation stories; only one can be sacred and the others are just stories. Strangely, this analysis reflects the kind of binary thinking that Chamberlin, and so many others, including King himself, would caution us to stop and examine. So, why does King create dichotomies for us to examine these two creation stories? Why does he emphasize the believability of one story over the other — as he says, he purposefully tells us the “Genesis” story with an authoritative voice, and “The Earth Diver” story with a storyteller’s voice. Why does King give us this analysis that depends on pairing up oppositions into a tidy row of dichotomies? What is he trying to show us?
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King uses dichotomies to show those from a Western society how different perspectives can alter the overall message, tone, and opinion of – in this case – a creation story.
King intentionally presents both creation stories in a different manner as a way to create a division between the two. Charm’s story is told in an imaginative storyteller’s voice, and goes on for ten pages; the story of Genesis “maintain[s] a sense of rhetorical distance and decorum” (King 22), and lasts a mere page and a half. The text itself if broken up into many smaller paragraphs and dialogue in The Earth Diver, whereas the story of Adam and Eve is simply a couple blocks of straight prose. Already, a dichotomy is being formed by the direct contrasts King incorporates. It is much easier to accept “clean cut” (Paterson) choices, but allowing yourself to believe in a one-or-the-other ideal leaves us oblivious to deeper meanings and issues that still exist. “Good vs evil”, “rich vs poor”, and “black vs white” (King 25) are all dichotomies that go from one end of the spectrum to the other, without acknowledging that there is indeed a degree of middle ground in between. The two stories have different values attached to them, and King purposefully presents them in contradicting ways to emphasize such differences.
I believe that truly open-minded people are the most difficult to come by – and I am not embarrassed to admit that I myself fall short in this category. When I say open-minded, I am referring to a person who can put their own judgments aside, see, respect, understand, and accept another’s perspective, without integrating their own biased opinion. By “trust[ing] easy oppositions” (King 25), the complexity needed to comprehend the perspectives of others is extinguished.
Lutz talks about how it is “[difficult to comprehend] the performances of the indigenous participants” (32). This, again, goes back to understanding alternate perspectives. The story of Genesis is more formal and easier (depending on personal religious views?) to accept as reality compared to the story of the Earth Diver.
It is important to expand ones mind past the presentation and given information, especially with the media. A close friend of a friend of mine has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Her case in particular does not effect her physically or mentally; she has good muscle control and is very intelligent. Her speech, however, is much slower and slurred. One day, she was biking down the street, and a news crew asked to interview her about a political issue occurring at the time. She answered their questions, and, being the open person she was, also explained her speech impairment and struggle with MS. The reporter then asked her about the new bike she was riding, and they spoke briefly about that. Later that night, she watched the news hoping the reporter included her interview in their story. Instead of using her for their political story, the news channel chose to use the footage of her talking about her bike at the end of the program as the happy-go-lucky ending to their show. It was captioned “woman with Multiple Sclerosis”. Not only did they exclude the part of her actually explaining her condition, but they spun the story to emphasize her slurred speech and make her appear blissfully ignorant.
While this is not directly related to dichotomies, I do believe it is relatable to King’s message about the importance of perspectives, and how the presentation of information in crucial in storytelling. Unfortunately I cannot find a clip of the interview, but it is horrifying to know what news channels will do to create stories they believe will please their target audience. Knowing her side of the story changes MY OWN PERSPECTIVE on things I see on the news – and also makes me question how much truth is in their stories.
Works Cited
Lutz, John. “First Contact as a Spiritual Performance: Aboriginal — Non-Aboriginal Encounters on the North American West Coast.” Myth and Memory: Rethinking Stories of Indigenous-European Contact. Ed. Lutz. Vancouver: U of British Columbia P, 2007. 30-45. Print.
Paterson, Erika. “Lesson 2:2.” ENGL 470A Canadian Studies Canadian Literary Genres. University of British Columbia, Web. 04 April 2014. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl470/unit-2/lesson-2-2/>.
“What Is Multiple Sclerosis? What Causes MS?” WebMD. Web. 05 Apr. 2014. <http://www.webmd.com/multiple-sclerosis/guide/what-is-multiple-sclerosis>.