In her article, “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel,” Blanca Chester observes that “the conversation that King sets up between oral creation story, biblical story, literary story, and historical story resembles the dialogues that Robinson sets up in his storytelling performances (47). She writes:
Robinson’s literary influence on King was, as King himself says, “inspirational.” When one reads King’s earlier novel, Medicine River, and compares it with Green Grass, Running Water, Robinson’s impact is obvious. Changes in the style of the dialogue, including the way King’s narrator seems to address readers and characters directly (using the first person), in the way traditional characters and stories from Native cultures (particularly Coyote) are adapted, and especially in the way that each of the distinct narrative strands in the novel contains and interconnects with every other, reflect Robinson’s storied impact. (46)
For this blog assignment I would like you to make some comparisons between Harry Robson’s writing style in “Coyote Makes a Deal with the King Of England” and King’s style in Green Grass, Running Water. What similarities can you find between the two story-telling voices? Coyote and God are present in both texts, how do they compare in character and voice across the stories?
Edward Norton in Fight Club. A film with a very interesting take on the role of the narrator.
As the question suggests, there are clear similarities to be made between the two authors and their respective writing styles. Although having characters shared between the two readings, Chester recognizes that the impression that Robinson has on Thomas King is illuminated via the relationship between the different stories that are placed in the book. On top of this, the two authors employ different roles for the narrators in their stories, providing very interesting yet divergent qualities of two stories sharing a couple of the same characters.
A main difference in “Coyote Makes a Deal With the King of England” by Robinson and the story by King, is the role in which both the narrator, and Coyote embody. For example, in the story by King, Coyote, although a critical member of cast, has a seemingly transparent element to him, residing in the background at points. Whereas in Robinson’s writing, Coyote is a very notable character, where the communication between the King and himself occupies a large part of the story. Now, when it comes to the narrators, there is a fundamental difference between the two. King provides the reader with a narrator, a hand-hold throughout the telling of the story. Robinson takes the adverse approach, his story lacks a narrator. He places us in the position of being our own narrator, a distinctive quality to favour in being a story made for oral story telling. The style of the stories share many similarities, but differ in what they ask of us in their reading. One employing us to take on the role of the narrator, and the other providing us with one.
This got me thinking about the different types of narrator that can be present in stories. There isn’t a simple binary around the presence of a narrator versus a lack of a narrator; there can be a couple different kinds. Something that I hadn’t thought about is the notion of the “unreliable” narrator. Someone that isn’t “credible, or even intentionally deceptive” (Miller-Wilson.) Some argue, “choosing how you tell a story is almost as important as the story itself” (Kittelstad.) In conclusion, the two stories exhibit a certain harmony in regards to both Coyote and God, but when it comes to the story-telling voices utilized there were some fundamental singularities.
Works Cited
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.
Chester, Blanca. “Green Grass, Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.” Canadian Literature 161-162. (1999).Web. April 04/2013.
Robinson, Harry. Living by Stories: a Journey of Landscape and Memory. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2005. Print.
Miller-Wilson, K. (n.d.). 12 classic unreliable Narrator Examples. Retrieved from https://examples.yourdictionary.com/12-classic-unreliable-narrator-examples.html
Kittelstad, K. (n.d.). Examples of NARRATION: 3 main types in literature. Retrieved from https://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-narration.html
2 Comments
Hi Aidan,
Though brief, I enjoyed your blog post; the sentence “places us in the position of being our own narrator” in particular got me thinking. While I agree that King does provide us with a narrator in the more traditional sections of his novel, I would argue that in the sections that are discourse between the Coyote and whoever “I” is that the narrator somewhat drops away. I feel in these sections, King embodies Robinson’s way of storytelling with the use of more colloquial speech and less description. Much like with Robinson’s text, it inserts the reader into the text a little more than when reading the rest of ‘Green Grass, Running Water’ from the birds-eye view King provides.
Seeing that we talked about a similar topic in our blogs, and that were both “short-and-sweet,” straight to the point bloggers, I was wondering if you would be interested in grouping up for the end-of-term project.
Thanks!
~Cayla
Hi Cayla,
Thank you for your comment! I very much appreciate your views on the topic, I love hearing the thoughts of classmates who tackled the same question for their blog post, it always provides a new and interesting perspective.
With this being said, I would love to form a group together for the end of term project.
Thank you!