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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In The Truth About Stories Thomas King juxtaposes an Aboriginal creation story with the archetypal Judeo-Christian creation story and he labels them using simple oppositions – one story is about co-operation, the other is about competition. If we believe one story to be sacred, the other must be secular.
“You’ll recognize this pairing as a dichotomy, the elemental structure of Western society,” King says. “We trust easy oppositions” (25.)
I think by placing so much emphasis on the dichotomy between the two creation stories, King invites us to examine and even challenge this binary way of thinking. And he does this in a very interesting way.
When addressing his audience, King makes an assumption that the majority subscribes to the Judeo-Christian worldview (21-22).He assumes that most of us are familiar with Adam and Eve and he makes it alien and unappealing to them.
Note how he re-tells the biblical creation story. Not only does he keep it short and terse, but he fills it with negative connotations. He emphasizes rules and restrictions. He implies that the God is cold, unforgiving and distant with his tone of voice. He uses phrases like “God tosses Adam and Eve” out and ends the story on a tragic note, simply stating that Adam and Eve were left to fend for themselves in a “howling wilderness” (King, 22). In comparison, the Earth Diver story is enchanting. It’s warm and comforting. Everybody helps each other and it ends on a positive note.
After listing all the differences between the stories, King offers us an easy opposition. He says that the stories ask us to choose between a world “that begins in harmony and slides towards chaos or a world that begins in chaos and moves towards harmony.” The answer seems obvious. Of course, the majority of people would want to choose the latter. But if the majority subscribes to the biblical creation story, what does this say about their story?
So I think by presenting these two stories to us this way, one ‘fun and nice’, the other ‘grim and dark’, King tries to show that dichotomies aren’t that clear-cut or obvious as many of us might make them out to be. In the Western society, we use them all the time, he says and offers us a variety of familiar ones like rich/poor, success/failure, civilized/barbaric (25). But through these two creation stories, King tries to show that dichotomies can be easily manipulated. They are not set in stone. Believability – which as Chamberlin says is the currency of stories and what gives them power – can be changed. How you tell the story matters. Words matter. (Very much so if we are to believe this interesting post.) Who listens to the story matters as well, as we all come with our preconceived notions and expectations. So if this is the case, who’s to say which story is sacred/secular, true/false? Ultimately, I think King is inviting us to reject rigid dichotomies. Instead, we should perceive and accept complexities and enigmas.
WORKS CITED
Borchard, Therese J. “Words Can Change Your Brain.” Psych Central.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2015.
“Genesis 1.” BibleGateway. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Feb. 2015.
King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto, ON: House of Anansi, 2003. Print.
“Native American Earthdiver Characters.” Native American Indian Earthdivers. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Feb. 2015.
I think you’re right that King encourages us to embrace complexities and enigmas. And I think he gives us a strategy for doing so. By telling us about how he has honed the false story about how his father left because he hated him and his mother stayed because she loved him until is is “sharp enough to cut bone” (King 25), he shows us that the way to enforce dichotomies is to continue to retell the stories that contain them in ways that embrace their simple, oppositional thinking over and over again, whereas the way to embrace complexity and enigma is to tell varying stories in varying ways rather than sticking to one or two and always communicating them in the same voices (King 22-23).
King, Thomas. The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative. Toronto, ON: House of Anansi, 2003. Print.
Hi Lauren,
I think you’re right, I think a part of embracing complexities/enigmas really is accepting that the stories we live by are fluid – that they can and do change, that they may mean something else to another. Great insight!
Hi Tarana, and thank you for your thought provoking reading of King’s creation stories!
I am most intrigued by your keen observation to note King’s take on stories as offering us a choice between a World “that begins in harmony and slides towards chaos or a world that begins in chaos and moves towards harmony.”, More importantly, what can this come to mean in representation of us as a race and culture? I am a huge theater and movie nut, and I am really pulled towards the way our current culture chooses to tell stories in the medium of movies in relation to these ideas.
The number of films made in these current years with the theme of a chaotic World fighting for harmony, or a harmonious World coping with ensuing chaos, has been astonishing, headlined by films such as ‘The Hunger Games’ and epic survival films such as ‘2012’. I understand I am approaching this issue with the mindset that the World that is depicted in the ‘chaos to harmony’ films is indeed a less favorable one, and that this might be contested, but I hope that won’t become the topic of my discussion. Instead, I am intrigued by the way we are attracted to harmony and chaos as polar opposites, when in my opinion, harmony and chaos belongs to both harmonious and chaotic Worlds. I think we carry forward with us a very set and rigid idea of what is harmony and what is chaos, when I think when it comes to stories, should instead be an idea that is fluid and mobile. Simplistically, I see bad in the ‘good guys’ of movies, and good in the ‘bad guys of movies’. Take Walter White of ‘Breaking Bad’ for instance, good or bad? Harmonious in his cause and chaotic in his method?
What is it about the shift from our ideals of harmony and chaos that is attractive to us? What is it about the medium of films that makes this epic like nature of stories that much more powerful?
Cheers,
– Jeffrey
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for your insightful comments, I especially liked this point you raise: “Harmony and chaos belong to both harmonious and chaotic worlds.” It reminded me of one of my favorite poems by Keats. It’s “Ode to Melancholy” and in the end, he says something like “In the very temple of delight/veil’d Melancholy has her Sovran shrine.” I like this line because I feel it shows how interrelated joy and sorrow really are instead of being polar opposites. Similarly with harmony and chaos – I think you’re right, they are often interrelated. (Loving the Breaking Bad example, by the way!) Why we persist in polarizing them, I’m at a loss to say. Is like, like King suggested because it’s easy? Is it our upbringing/stories? Is it just human nature to delight in absolutes?
Thanks again for sharing – you’ve given me loads to think about ☺
Hi Tarana! Thanks for your great response to this interesting question! I, like Lauren, agree with you that King is likely suggesting that his readers embrace the complexities and variances in stories. In all this disussion of dichotomies and categorizations and upon reading King’s works especially, I have come to realize that even in the face of many varying stories, it is not necessary to choose to follow the voice of a single authority. I think King tries to draw our attention to the fact that ways of knowing exist in many forms and that while some ways of knowing will come across as more “legitimate” than others simply because of the tone in which they’re told, we do not have to buy into the process of dichotomization and CHOOSING a single story to represent our knowledge, while discarding and disregarding all others. In some way, I think King’s representation of the two stories provides readers with a bit of a challenge (especially those of us who have been so heavily immersed in this culture of heavy dichotomization) and forces us to reconsider this process!
Hi Shamina,
I think you’re right, King does try to draw our attention to the fact that we don’t necessarily need to choose one story and exclude all others – after all both the ‘opposing’ creation stories he shares are ultimately about the same thing: how the world was created. I think that’s why he encourages us to embrace complexities, because they allow us to keep an open mind, to entertain the possibility that there is more than one way of knowing. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Tarana,
Great post! I especially enjoyed your commentary on King’s “easy opposition” and having to make a choice between a world that begins in chaos and ends in harmony or a world that begins in harmony and ends in chaos. You pose the question “if the majority subscribes to the biblical creation story, what does this say about their story?” I feel that on a level playing field you’re right, the biblical creation story comes across as cold and destructive and the aboriginal story shows adaption and beauty, however, I also think that by showing how these dichotomies are a part of our present lives King is able to point out the irrelevancy of WHAT is believed and place the importance instead on HAVING beliefs.
In her comment on this post Shamina Kallu states that “we do not have to buy into the process of dichotomization and CHOOSING a single story to represent our knowledge, while discarding and disregarding all others.” This I believe, is a very insightful comment. In our world we all have a perspective and a belief system even if that belief system is that there is no God. Why then do we still feel the need to place limitations on our beliefs and the beliefs of others, and why do we all think we’re right?
– Jennifer Heinz
Hi Jennifer,
I meant the question to be rhetorical! 🙂 I feel what King was doing there was challenging people’s beliefs about dichotomy, legitimacy. By offering us an easy dichotomy, where the answer is rather obvious – he makes the majority (who he assumes subscribe to the biblical creation story) question their story. Makes them realize how easy it is to influence & manipulate stories. And if this is the case, we shouldn’t label and divide stories into easy dichotomies. Because we really can’t.
You raise a interesting point there, that perhaps ultimately it doesn’t really matter what is believed. Just that we all do believe in something. (After all, both these ‘opposing’ stories tell us about the same thing : how the world was created.) Perhaps that’s a good place to find a sort of common ground?
Hey Tarana,
Great post! To be honest, I had’t noticed the negative connotation King added to the Adam and Eve tale. I had focused on the clear-cut way he told it, as if trying to make it appear as solid facts. I really liked your reading of this, and it made me appreciate the text further. Thank you!
Charlotte
Hi Charlotte,
Thanks for feedback! 🙂